


The Men that Left South Park

by Sleepy_Kitty



Category: South Park
Genre: F/M, Landlord/tenant relationships, M/M, Moving country, Multi, Overseas experience, Some feels, goth kids - Freeform, personal issues, slow burn relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-02 20:16:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5262032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleepy_Kitty/pseuds/Sleepy_Kitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*DISCONTINUED*</p><p>Now 23 years old, Kyle Broflovski decides to move overseas to Japan for practical overseas experience with Maggie, a Brazilian girl whom he met over Facebook as his roommate, and Michael, the now 25 year old Goth as their reluctant and moody landlord.</p><p>During their experience, all three find themselves in the middle of conflicts from all directions (friends, family, careers) as they try to make their lives work in Tokyo. They must learn to either deal with life as it comes or let other people solve their problems for them and while some can be learned through love, others can only be learned through terror.</p><p>Eventual Kyle/Maggie (OC)/Michael<br/>Eventual Cartman/Kyle (one-sided)<br/>Some Stan/Wendy<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. おいしい！(Chapter 1)

**Author's Note:**

> My first story on here! I've actually written many things before but I've never had the guts to post them online, so I'm hoping this does well. This story assumes that many readers have a basic knowledge of the events of some of the episodes as those happenings will be referenced frequently.
> 
> Read at the end for tips on the Japanese within the chapters, it'll apply to every chapter that contains Japanese for now.

By the time he was 23, Kyle Broflovski decided that his life in South Park had just about done its dash. Using the money that he had saved while working part time at Tom's Rhinoplasty during his mid to late teenage years and later during college, he had decided to add overseas experience to his already impressive belt of achievements.

It was about that time, and he felt like he was prepared, both financially and mentally.

The location was already set – Tokyo, Japan.

Kyle held fond memories of Japanese culture from his childhood, although his Chinpokomon knowledge could only get him so far in the practical sense of living there. He'd have to start from scratch, though it was something he was willing to do if it meant getting out of South Park for once in his life.

After all, there wasn't much to miss in South Park other than his family.

Stan was in North Park attending college on a football scholarship and though they regularly skyped, Stan knew Kyle's ambitions were much too great to hold him back in the dead end town.

Kenny was working at a mechanics on the outskirts of town, but he had been done for possession of methamphetamine and was thrown in jail. He'd been in there for a few months now, serving a 4 year sentence.

Cartman had moved state with his mother and had fallen out of contact with everyone, though Kyle always had the creepy feeling that Cartman continued to keep up with him despite living in California.

Knowing full well that the only substantial thing he'd be leaving in South Park was his family, Kyle was forced to break the news to them one night over dinner, proudly announcing that he was planning on moving to Tokyo. Rather unsurprisingly, Gerald supported him and wished him the best of luck, but Sheila, of course, overreacted. She was horrified that he had spent so much time, energy and, most importantly, money on his law degree, and she fully expected that he would eventually take over Gerald's practise in the township.

“Ma, seriously,” Kyle mumbled, scratching his head through his unruly red locks. “I don't wanna be stuck behind a desk dealing with paperwork all my life. I wanna explore the world."

"Sheila, come on now honey, I think some experience overseas will do him some good,” Gerald attempted to reason with her while he cut his sweet potato. “It's practical, and it'll mature him beyond his years."

“He's already mature!” Sheila shouted, taking Ike's now empty plate from his hands. “He doesn't need to be more mature Gerald!"

Ike, now 18 and ready to graduate high school, turned to Kyle with a big fat smile on his face. Puberty had given Ike (and his parents for all we know) hell, though thanks to his early exposure to hormone pills at the age of 5, he managed to get past relatively unscathed (though he still had to deal with the notoriety of having slept with his kindergarten teacher). Kyle was going to miss him dearly, though at least there was always Facebook and Skype for them to communicate through.

“Who are you gonna stay with? Have you figured that out yet?”

Kyle nodded enthusiastically while Sheila angrily stomped into the kitchen, clearly still not happy with his plans, “Yeah, I found this girl on Facebook. Turns out, she's moving there for OE too, but to keep the apartment she's rented, she needs a roommate to help pay for the bills and stuff.”

Another angry snarl came from the kitchen at the notion that Kyle had planned everything out to the T. 

Gerald turned his head towards the kitchen upon hearing the noise and let out an exasperated sigh at his wife's childishness, “Honey, Kyle clearly knows what he's doing. And he's old enough. And he has the money! I think we can give him some credit and have a bit of faith in him, right?”

“And what exactly is this girl's name? And where does she live?” Sheila reminded Kyle of an interrogating police officer. She was the bad cop, and his father was the good cop. That was how it always seemed to be anyway.

He rolled his eyes at her and sighed a little before answering, “Her name is Maggie, and she's moving from Brazil. Ma, it's not that big of a deal! I'll be fine! And anyway, Maggie apparently knows a little bit more Japanese than I do, so I won't be lost on the translations for things."

Ike looked up at his mother and shrugged, “Ma, I believe that he'll be fine! He skypes a lot, remember? He'll probably skype us every night!”

"Well, maybe not every n--"

A curt kick to the shin underneath the dinner table cut Kyle's answer short, and he quickly caught on to what Ike was getting at – anything to calm their mother down.

“Oh yeah yeah ma I'll skype every day, it's no big deal! Time zones, you know, but I'll try my best.”

"Kyle bubhie, I just... you know that I worry about you and your safety, and moving across the world is such a big responsibility,” Sheila reasoned, sitting down opposite Kyle and looking at him with the most loving eyes a mother could give her son. “I just thought that you'd be happier here with your friends and family, running your own law firm...”

The red-headed boy understood where she was coming from, and he thanked her every day for being as protective as she was. However, he knew what he wanted, and he was ready for a new chapter in his life to begin.

“Listen, ma, I'm not leaving you all forever... All of my friends are, well, gone,” he started listing off Stan, Kenny and Cartman's statuses off his fingers to them, quickly remarking that he doesn't really care what Cartman does or where he is anyway. “I don't wanna be chained down, and who knows – maybe I can work as a lawyer in Japan? My degree's not totally going to waste ma! I can still use it...”

Gerald reached over and gently patted Kyle's arm, giving him a reassuring smile, “We'll support whatever you want to do with your life son. Your mother may freak out over these things but, that's just because we want you to be safe and be happy with whatever it is that you're doing."

Every day that he was alive, Kyle considered himself lucky for having such a loving family, and admittedly, he felt bad about leaving them in such a way. However, he knew that if he didn't take this opportunity, it would just come back and bite him later. He wanted to do it, and he had to. He thanked his mother, father and Ike for their understanding before dinner was resumed.

\------------

Weeks passed and Kyle had finally arrived in Tokyo's International Airport, greeted with the unfamiliar yet comforting smell of a new country and the sound of the Japanese language all around him. This was the experience he had longed for, and now at such a young age, he could grab this opportunity with both hands and get all he could from it.

He received a text shortly after landing and taking his phone off of airplane mode.

“Meet me at 3rd Seaside Cafe. It's in the airport. Welcome to Japan dear friend! :) "

It was Maggie, the girl he was to be spending a great deal of his time with in this new and foreign place. Honestly, it was comforting. It was definitely better than showing up on the plane and having no idea where to go next without some sort of a helping hand. 

With an intake of breath, Kyle looked around and spotted a map pointing him in the correct direction to the cafe.

The smell of a cafe was always delicious and never seemed to get old, no matter how many cafes one walked into. Kyle took a seat by himself in the corner and retrieved his laptop from one of his luggage bags, opening Skype and calling Stan. Surprisingly, he was still awake – it was normal of him to be awake late into the night, but with the time differences between them, it was going to be near impossible for Kyle to be able to figure out Stan's sleeping patterns from now on.

“So how was the flight dude?” Stan's face lit up with excitement upon noticing the active scenes behind Kyle's head of people rushing for their flights. “Oh shit, where are you?!"

“I'm in a cafe dude, the desserts here are something else!” Kyle replied with glee, holding up what appeared to be a triangle shaped spongecake that he ordered waiting for Stan to pick up the call. “And the flight was fine, a bit of turbulence but, you know, that shit's always happening with the planes. Maggie texted me and told me she's gonna meet me here, but the apartment's pretty far so she's taking a while.”

At the mention of her name, Stan sighed and rubbed his face with his palm, eventually dragging it down his face and letting his chin go with a dramatic sigh. Kyle raised his eyebrow and tilted his head.

“What's wrong man?”

“Ugh, Wendy just dumped me again...”

“... Keyword here is “again”, and why did mentioning my roommate remind you about the fact that Wendy dumped you once again? What even happened?”

Watching Kyle bite into the delicious looking spongecake didn't necessarily help Stan's mood, but the shittiest thing he could do right now was, as a friend, be in a bad mood over his on-and-off again girlfriend while his best friend was starting a new chapter of his life. He figured that if he just told Kyle what happened then the entire topic would be dropped as soon as it was over.

“She's gotten into this new wave feminism bullshit and all they do is talk about how all men are pigs and disgusting and all that shit,” Stan rattled off, bringing his fingers up to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration. “So she called me up a couple 'a nights ago, and she starts accusing me of cheating on her and she called me a pig, claiming something about “oh the feminists were right about men!”, and just like that she broke up with me."

At the tale, Kyle could only shake his head in irritation and he placed the spongecake down on the plate next to his laptop, “Wendy hasn't changed at all since 4th grade Stan, you should know what she's like. She might even start dating Token again.”

Bringing up Token seemed to only irritate Stan further. However, from his peripheral vision, Kyle noticed someone entered the cafe looking around for something. He thought nothing of it until the person spotted him in all his red-headed glory, and began to approach him.

“ – living in New York as a sports analyst man, he's too smart to give her the time of day,” he heard the last snippet of Stan's statement as he recognised the person approaching him as his future roommate.

Upon seeing Maggie for the first time in the flesh, Kyle felt his insides coiling up tight before suddenly expanding and blowing up, forcing him to intake a deep breath that would have no doubt made him look ridiculous. She offered his hand to him with her hazel eyes lit in glee, happy to finally meet him in the flesh after what was seemingly months of messaging and video calls. His eyes still wide, he looked up at her and offered his hand up to her, yet didn't bother to straighten it out.

“こんいちは!” she said as she shook his rather limp hand and took a seat next to him, her accent sounding completely foreign to him yet not at all unpleasant to his ears. “You're Kyle Broflovski, right?”

Just over the poor quality of Kyle's laptop camera, Stan noticed the girl sitting beside his best friend and smiled. He had only seen her in photos on her Facebook page, and those were scarce as, according to Kyle's explanation, she wasn't a fan of the “selfie”. All that he knew was she was pale, which, thanks to his lack of "foreign awareness" until the age of 21, confused him when he learned she was from Brazil. In fact, there wasn't much to her on her Facebook page, she seemed to be one who loved her privacy. According to her page, the last status she made was about two months ago. He considered it strange that in such a technologically driven age, but it at least seemed safe. That is, so long as she wasn't a 35 year old man intent on wearing Kyle's flesh as a suit.

“Y-Yeah, that's me,” Kyle mumbled quietly. “Kyle Broflovksi, recently graduated law student.”

"Stan Marsh!” Stan waved his hand, catching Maggie and Kyle's attention. “Uh, sports psychologist still studying and shit like that. Boring stuff. You must be Kyle's new roommate.”

Maggie smiled, “Ah, so exciting!” she cleared her throat before she began to speak again, “ 初めまして！Maggie です。よろしくおねがいします！"

She didn't know what to expect, but the sudden look of utter confusion and, what seemed to be horror, on their faces made her laugh. 

She waved her hand and shook her head, “I'm sorry, sorry sorry sorry. Uh, nice to meet you both, finally! I'm Margaret Lewis, but eh just call me Maggie. it's easier.”

Both Stan and Kyle nodded and mumbled about how her nickname would be much easier to remember.

“So how was the flight from Colorado Kyle?” Maggie asked, putting her bag down beside her on the seat.

The red-head rubbed the back of his head and yawned involuntarily as soon as she mentioned his flight, “Tiring as hell. I'm seriously jet lagged..."

“Yo, I heard that, the flight from Brazil cramped up my neck a bit,” Maggie said as she started to rummage through her bag, creating some loud metal jingly noises as she did. “Oh by the way there's already some sheets and duvets at the apartment, you just need to go and pick your room.”

"Oh man dude, it'll be just like living in a sorority house,” Stan piqued in, obviously still very focused on the conversation that was taking place. “Except, you know, instead of stupid drunkards as your roommates, you have a really cool girl living with you.”

Maggie appeared to be totally lost on his compliment on her and instead looked at him with a curious expression, “Oh you're part of a sorority?”

“Not me no, but my ex-girlfriend is and, from experience, they kind of do nothing but cause trouble and plant stupid thoughts in their roommates heads.”

“Oh... okay well then if that's always the case, consider yourself lucky Stan,” she shrugged then pulled out a small key before placing it in Kyle's hand. “This is the spare key the landlord gave me. I don't know how our schedules will end up but I thought that the landlord should at least have made another key for you. It's only fair. Just in case, you know, I'm out getting drunk or something and you can't get in.”

Kyle took it with a nod and inspected it before placing it in the front pocket of his satchel bag. The mention of the word “schedule” made Kyle nervous, as he had not yet fully figured out what it was he planned to do in Japan. Taking it one baby step at a time was a must do in this situation, lest Kyle wind up penniless and finding himself stuck in Tokyo with no way of working or getting back to visit his family every few months. 

Then again, perhaps a bit more forward thinking might have helped in the slightest.

"Thanks Maggie,” he said before turning to Stan on Skype. “I gotta go now dude, time to check out my awesome new apartment! I'll send you pictures and we can Skype... like, whenever you're ready. Time zones can be a bitch.”

“Yeah it's alright dude I understand, have fun man,” Stan smiled and waved his hand slightly. “And it was nice meeting you Maggie."

She jumped at the mention of her name, making both Kyle and Stan chuckle – she was clearly very highly strung. Kyle could feel it already; he was gonna get on really well with her, which was always a positive when it came to getting roommates from over the internet. It was risky, but at least in this case, it seemed to pay off.

"And you too Stanley, have a good... night? Day?”

“Oh it's like 8:25pm on Wednesday, so it must be like Thursday there for you guys.. You just time-traveled Kyle, for fucks sake, you got anything else you wanna add to your list of achievements?"

Kyle made sure to comment that it wasn't his fault time zones were screwed up in different parts of the world, and with a final goodbye, he shut off Skype and closed his laptop. He turned to Maggie, who was eyeing his triangle shaped spongecake. With a glance, he looked down at it and chuckled before standing up.

“Before we check this apartment out, let me buy you one,” he said, getting some yen out of his wallet. “Cause they're seriously good, and I don't want you to miss out.”

With a smile, she placed her bag on her lap and said only one word to him.

“おいしい！”

Staring at her for a few seconds to attempt to comprehend what she just said, Kyle could only chuckle again as he walked up behind the line. He'd have to take his time learning Japanese, considering how difficult it sounds just hearing people around him speaking it in passing. Though he started thinking that he too could learn passively, now that he understands that his roommate could simply spout random Japanese phrases and sentences out whenever she wanted.

As he waited, Kyle began to repeat the last word she said to him and listened to the way it rolled off his tongue.

おいしい...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Japanese in the chapters will be learned slowly by both Kyle and you (as in, the person reading this)! I have not provided translations for now because, like Kyle, it'll probably just seem like a bunch of sounds/characters with no meaning.
> 
> But have no fear! As you all continue reading, you will learn along the way with Kyle, and he'll even provide translations for you if some of you get a bit too lazy to put it in Google translate. Don't be afraid to admit laziness, I DO NOT JUDGE!


	2. はじめまして (Chapter 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My personal headcanon is that Michael is either a year or two older than the main boys are, so I decided to apply that here. 
> 
> Also, Michael's apparently American-Asian (as revealed on Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers), which is actually pretty cool! His mother's Asian, and you guys know how South Park is...

Walking to the apartment was essentially a sight-seeing tour, with Kyle and Maggie pointing out many different aspects of the Japanese world that captured their interest as the taxi drove them through the city. They made a mental reminder to themselves to check the shows and movies they saw advertised in detail later on, though due to their less than fluent understanding of the language, it was more a case of “remember the cool poster of the chick running away from what appeared to be a huge onion monster!”. Maybe their landlord would be able to explain the premises to them if they were that interested. 

That is, if he cared enough.

They eventually arrived at large apartment complex behind a large gate. The building was at least easy to find – a nice off white colour set against the bland steel of the cityscape around it with small balconies to rooms dotted across the face of it. It was impressive yet familiar, and had already served Kyle his first bout of homesickness. 

The taxi pulled over and, after paying and retrieving his bags from the back, Kyle followed her as she opened the gate for him.

“Okay, it's just in here,” Maggie stopped at the doors and pointed to the intercom pad beside them. “Our room number is 114, the landlord dude said that if either one of us comes home late, or to an empty apartment, to just speak through that and he'll let us in.”

Kyle nodded, struggling to keep his bags up with the horrific pain gathering in his arm muscles, “Jesus, okay.”

At the sound of his struggling, Maggie turned back and looked at him while blinking before helping him with some of the bags, “How much stuff did you bring? We're gonna have to get those dudes inside to help us with this.”

As he attempted to drag his bags into the apartment lobby, Maggie ran ahead and asked for some help from the staff with them. After all, it'd be her fault if his arms fell off in a big fleshy landslide the next day, she could at least try to give his muscles a little bit of rest before they do.

After signing in and getting the staff to help with Kyle's ridiculous amount of luggage, he and Maggie made their way to their room, nodding politely and bowing to other apartment owners who passed them by.

It was a big step for Kyle in the way of independence; no longer would he have to depend on his parents for transport, work or even shelter at this point. Kyle was proud, and the last thing he wanted was for his career and his life to be handed to him on a silver platter. He wanted to work for it and feel like he belonged with every other adult that he used to class as “responsible” when he was young. Of course, living in South Park, the number of responsible mature adults was hideously low, but that was besides the point.

Maggie felt the same way, telling Kyle that she moved away from home to gain valuable life experience and independence. Plus, if she was being honest with both herself and Kyle, Japan was “just an awesome place to live”.

That is, if they didn't over-stress themselves and work themselves into an early grave.

“So... where's our landlord? Is he around?” Kyle asked as they walked down the hallway to their apartment, the staff having moved his luggage to the apartment room before they arrived. 

“Yeah he's around, he was here when I first arrived and he, uh, “welcomed” me by basically setting out all the rules before he even said anything remotely close to “hello”,” she answered as she began to unlock the door to the apartment. “He's not exactly the friendly type...”

Upon Maggie opening the door, a taller man with black curly hair, pale skin and a cross earring stepped out. He looked down at Maggie and then at Kyle, raising an eyebrow at him. The look on his face was strange, as if he was trying to place Kyle's face yet at the same time immediately recognised him and felt sudden disgust.

“This is your roommate Mag? The one you met over Facebook right? Pfft. Everyone person on the planet is on there. Bunch of conformists.”

The red-head frowned. Maggie immediately felt the tension between the two and placed her hand on Kyle's shoulder to calm him down. This wasn't the meeting she was hoping for, an unhealthy landlord-tenant relationship could make everything so much more unpleasant than necessary.

“Yeah actually, uh, Kyle, this is Michael,” Maggie waved her hand in Michael's direction, who kept staring at him strangely. “And Michael, this is Kyle, Kyle Broflovski.”

Common courtesy in some countries dictates that when one is introduced to someone new, they shake hands in a polite manner. Apparently for Kyle and Michael, it was better if they stayed as far away from each other as possible; Kyle was feeling some strange vibes coming off of Michael the longer he looked at him. However, the cross caught his eye, and for a moment, he was taken back to life in South Park when he was 10...

“Broflovski? Oh, wait. You're that little Jewish conformist dude that was friends with Raven?” Michael asked – well, more like monotoned. “Yeah I remember you. Kind of.”

Of all the people in the world, Kyle and Maggie's landlord just so happened to be Michael – as in, Michael, the leader of the goth kids that liked to call the back of South Park Elementary “home”. The ones that always smoked and complained about how shit life was, that it was nothing but “death and despair”. The ones that Stan joined after his first and most serious break up with Wendy (since then, every other break up was a joke, and anyone with a double digit IQ could tell that they would get back together within a few days). 

Kyle couldn't believe it, and he his only reaction was to shake his head and his hands, as if trying to ward off some flies or mosquitoes.

“What, no fucking way, are you telling me you two know each other?!” Maggie was stupefied. The term “small world” didn't even seem to apply in this situation. It was just strange, some stroke of freak luck. Or just plain coincidence. 

But, that explanation was boring. 

“Well, kind of,” came Michael's answer as he recovered a cigarette pack from his pocket.

“Hang on, how the fuck are you even here right now?!” Kyle shouted, catching the attention of some of the neighbours. “How are YOU our landlord?!”

\---------

As it turned out, Michael's situation wasn't nearly as cheery as Kyle's was. By the time he was 19, Michael was in and out of rehabs and strange camps that his parents kept admitting him into in an attempt to “cure” him.

When he hadn't recovered by the age that society deemed “normal”, his parents had more ammunition against his phase after his friends had managed to move on without taking him with them;

Pete quickly grew out of it by the age of 16 when he first had sex and, apparently, “felt hope and love for the first time ever”. He was still with the girl the last time Michael spoke to him, which was a miracle.

Henrietta moved out of her parents home the moment she got the chance, but living discovered that on her own was a hassle, and she soon fell out of contact with her friends. Last time Michael spoke with her, she was exhausted, but she didn't want to die. She wanted to work through it. It only served to confuse him even more.

Firkle hung up his “non-conformist” boots a while ago and instead found a passion in poetry and literature, except instead of citing Edgar Allan Poe, he went on to cite Shakespeare. When he was 11, he won a writing competition held at school. He realised that he had found his path in life, and it didn't involve Michael or his friends' influence.

Michael was all alone.

And this only made his parents want to treat him even more. 

When every home and camp only made Michael angrier and more depressed, it was decided that drastic measures would need to be taken if it meant making him a “normal” teenager. Apparently, Michael's mother's relative (according to Michael, “a second-cousin twice removed or whatever the fuck”) owned an apartment block in Japan but he never had time to keep tabs on those who had rented an apartment room, ending in dizzying issues of non-payment of rent and legal problems. 

To Michael, he just sounded incompetent.

Michael's mother's relative required help with the duties of landlord, and she was more than happy to give her son a chance at it if it meant attempting to get him out of his ridiculously long goth phase.

“What?”

“You gonna go to Japan, be landlord!”

Michael could only stare in disbelief at his mother, and after a few seconds of looking at her, waiting for a smile to crack and a “just kidding! We send you away again!” to emerge, she shook her head.

“Relative need help in Japanese apartments! You go there!”

“Mom, NO,” he spat angrily, crushing his cigarette on the wood of the table, much to his father's discomfort. “I am NOT getting on a fucking plane with a bunch of posers and conformists going to another fucking country!”

“Michael, your mother and I have been talking and we think this will... help you...”

“Help me?! How the fuck is this gonna help me DAD?”

“It's time you grew up son!” his father growled, finally losing his temper for the first time with his son and his out of the ordinary behaviour. “No more of this stupid goth stuff, you're 25 years old and still living with us, and STILL calling everyone “conformists”. You haven't grown up at all in 13 years! We're doing this to help you!”

“So... you only want me to go Japan to stop being goth...?” Michael deadpanned, before scoffing and pushing his palms against the table, giving himself a boost backwards from it. “Fine, if that's how you want it to be. I'll go there, and get the fuck away from you two cause clearly, YOU'RE the ones that need the help, not me! You're the sick ones!!”

It could have gone better between his parents, and he has since fallen out of contact with them after adjusting to his life as a landlord. He doesn't miss them though, not one bit.

Fucking conformists.

\---------

“Psst.”

Maggie looked at Kyle and blinked when she noticed him leaning in towards her, his fingers fidgeting. She blinked and shook her head.

“What?”

“How do you say nice to meet you in Japanese? Cause, like, I don't want him to snap or anything... that wouldn't be a magnificent start to our tenant-landlord relationship.”

Michael watched in confusion as Maggie started whispering in his ear. He rolled his eyes and lit his cigarette while waiting, ignoring the “no smoking” sign that was hanging up on the wall not far from him. It was in Japanese, but the cigarette with a red X through it should have been a clear indication, regardless of his language capabilities.

Kyle turned to Michael and, with a straight face, raised his hand, “はじめまして.”

He quickly walked into the apartment before the goth man could respond, getting a look around the place while his roommate stood outside with him. Michael turned to Maggie after watching Kyle hurry into the room and raised an eyebrow, as if to mentally ask her, “What the hell was that?”

“Uh, sorry Michael,” she said as she hitched her bag over her shoulder. “Of all the places for the two of you to turn up, Jesus Christ. I feel like I'm on some practical joke show and you two are just gonna pull a fast one on me. Uh, please don't do that by the way.”

“Just pay your rent on the last Friday of every month and I won't kick you out. I don't do delayed payment of rent, as conforming as that sounds,” he muttered in response. “And I'm gonna come in every two weeks to inspect so I don't wanna see any shit lying around that shouldn't be there. And then there's the utility bills and shit...” 

Ugh, so conforming.

Maggie nodded and raised her hands, “Totally understandable Michael, we'll keep it in, uh, tip top shape. And we'll pay our bills on time.”

“I mean I actually don't give a shit,” he deadpanned out of nowhere, taking her by surprise. “But, you know, it's in the conformist contract and shit like that, so I kinda have to...”

She nodded and chuckled a little bit under her breath. Kyle was still looking around the apartment, so she decided to give him a tour. After bidding Michael farewell, she walked into the apartment and closed the door.

As soon as Kyle heard the door close, he turned to her and apparently seemed to no longer be feigning his fascination with the room.

“Are you serious?! He was just, like, curly goth dude when I was going to school! His name was Michael this whole time?” Kyle still seemed to be taking the news that his best friend's one time goth leader was their landlord pretty badly. 

“Well I'm surprised you're taking it so well, considering that you're just shocked that you learned his name for the first time,” Maggie commented rather sarcastically, putting her bag in the corner and hanging her coat up.

“No, Mag, you don't understand...” Kyle walked over to her and grabbed her arm, making her jump from the contact. “He's got the emotional capacity of a goldfish. He'll suck the life out of us -- he did it with Stan and he can do it again! We gotta get someone else!”

“Kyle! Kyle, just, be calm,” she replied, grabbing onto his shoulders and breathing in and out, attempting to sync her breathing with his. “It's fine. Michael will have, like, practically nothing to do with us. Just that two week inspection thing, and he expects rent on the last Friday of every month. I'm guessing he'll come to collect that. Other than that, he's not gonna be around. He won't visit us, he won't ring us every night-- it's fine. My god, who knew you could be such a wimp?”

Kyle stiffened and felt his chest swell angrily, his pride beginning to be hurt by Maggie's apparent lack of caring about the situation.

“He took Stan while he was depressed and made him goth,” he stated, pointing at the now closed doors. “It was depressing, and it was SUPER annoying!”

“And is Stan still a goth? Cause from the way I saw it, other than his ex-girlfriend being in some weird sorority or whatever, he seemed pretty normal to me,” Maggie answered simply, going over to throw her keys in a bowl on the coffee table.

For a while, Kyle simply stood there and thought about her statement.  
Stan's goth period lasted all of a few days in which he was intensely mourning his break up with Wendy. It was pretty pathetic to see him laying and moping around, but it was even more pathetic when he joined the goth kids. He got out of it pretty quickly, apparently with the help of Butters, who too went through a “break up” of his own. No one held a gun to Stan's head and told him to be a goth, it was just a sarcastic remark from Kyle that he should.  
His thoughts stopped when he remembered that it was his suggestion that made Stan join the goths in the first place. Michael wasn't involved at all.

He lowered his head, “No he's not goth, he got over it really quickly...”

Shit, he could have sworn he had remembered that the goths came up and started preaching that “all life was pain”.

“Well there you go, we're safe from the gothic hands of hell,” she smiled and went over to Kyle, taking his key from his hand. “Besides, you seem pretty jovial and upbeat, I doubt you could be easily converted to the ways of Edgar Allan Poe. Now stop worrying and pick your goddamn room will you? I decided to let you have first pick, considering how much further you flew out than me.”

She wandered into the kitchen area to familarise herself with where everything was in relation to each other. Kyle was impressed – a two bedroom apartment must have been difficult to come by in such a city, yet perhaps it wasn't as bad here as it was in America in terms of house/apartment prices. Then again, Michael had not yet informed them what their rent was, so they weren't completely out of the woods.  
Before all of the horrible waters of his responsibilities of living in a new country could get the better of him, he opened the screen door of a bedroom and looked around. 

He smiled, “Comfy.”

The bed wasn't a futon, but rather an elongated flat bed that looked like it had gone through the ironing press. Sitting down on it however proved that it was anything but uncomfortable. It hadn't been made up yet, although he remembered Maggie informing him about choosing his sheets and duvets when he arrived. To the side, a simple dresser sat, as well as a comfy chair and a window allowing sunlight into the room. It was simple but just comfortable enough for him to call this place home.

“Hey I forgot to tell you,” Maggie suddenly wandered into his room with two cups of tea in her hands. “We're supposed to take our shoes off – this place has tatami mats, but there are also slippers at the front door if you wanna wear those instead.”

“Oh shit sorry,” he sat down to remove his shoes. 

“No problem, I'm kind of used to taking my shoes off when I walk into a house but I kind of gather that some Americans don't really do that,” she said, attempting to sound as harmless as possible. “Here, I made you a tea.”

“Oh thanks Maggie,” he smiled as he put his shoes to the side and took the cup from her, holding it gingerly by the handle. 

“You're welcome, but hey also about the shoes, Michael might not do the tracking dirt inside thing so he might come around more often if he knows that we mess the place up, and I know that you two apparently have a rich history so... perhaps the less you see of him, the better.”

Kyle nodded and sighed as he sipped his hot tea – he could agree with that.


	3. おげんきですか (Chapter 3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, sorry about changing a lot of things in the previous two chapters, I wasn't really picturing Maggie as a Kiwi in my head! More of a Brazilian for some reason. 
> 
> Regardless, I hope you guys are enjoying the story.

“Yeah he arrived a few days ago, he's actually best friends with Rav – uh, I mean some random conformist kid I used to hang out with. As it turned out, he was just all depressed because his girlfriend broke up with him or whatever the fuck. But I told them about the rent and all that.”

Michael reclined back on his chair in his office, sandwiching his phone between his ear and his shoulder as he lit up another cigarette. He took a drag from it as he heard the sound of humming and harring on the other end of the line, his boss was attempting to articulate a response. There was a reason why Michael decided to wait a few days before contacting his boss; getting any sort of response took at least a few minutes and, on the worst days, up to an hour, forcing Michael to continuously top up the credit on his phone. He tended to put dealing with his boss off as much as he possibly could, for his credit and his sanity.

“Did you tell them how much the rent was?”

“No, because you didn't tell ME, Frank.”

“Go tell them rent is 50,000 yen a month! Go! Get off the phone!”

The goth frowned and removed his cigarette from his mouth, holding it between his index and middle finger. He refused to learn how to translate the prices between yen and dollars, and the fact that Maggie and Kyle weren't Japanese would just confuse them like shit when it came to asking for their rent. He might have bothered to learn the way to translate if he cared, but, well, he didn't. There wasn't really any sort of excuse for it.

“50,000 yen, what the fuck does that even mean Frank? How about you give me a fuckin' non-conforming currency, like dollars.”

“Fine, Michael. Tell them rent is $405 a month. Go!”

With an angry sigh, Michael hung up the phone without bothering to bid his boss goodbye. Frank wasn't exactly an “attentive” boss, and he let details slip by him so frequently that Michael, who didn't give a shit about his job, was forced to pick up the pieces and take care of them for him. It was no wonder that he found himself in so many legal disputes and problems with the courts. His workers were forced to handle the issues of inspection, rent and utilities for him, since, in his words, he was "too busy with other apartment blocks", which was code for, "I'm incompetent as fuck, do my job for me".  
He couldn't even ring his tenants and inform them himself, the lazy shit.

Well, actually, that was Michael's job; he tended to throw his responsibilities around, ignoring them and keeping them in the corner until they managed to sort themselves out. The less he had to do with his annoying tenants, the better. 

Especially the tenants in 114. Kyle was probably still friends with Stan and seemed like he had his shit together, and Maggie... well, she just seemed too energetic for him.

Conformists.

Michael rose from his seat and grabbed his cigarette pack. He was going to go out for another smoke after he spoke with the lame-os, and it was something he looked forward to.

\---------

The first few days in their apartment consisted of Maggie and Kyle unpacking their belongings, buying a few groceries and letting the idea of living in a new country sink in. Maggie decided that it would be a good idea to relax for a few days before the stress of living without the umbrella of parental guidance could set in and terrify them.  
Kyle snuggled into his blanket with his order of California sushi rolls. Maggie, however, had decided to go with pizza.

The fact that Maggie had a vehement dislike for California sushi rolls (thanks to her seaweed allergy) amused her friends when she informed them that she was planning on moving to Japan. Part of her wanted to reprimand her friends for believing that the only thing Japanese people seemed to eat was sushi, yet she knew that she would rather go to Japan with her friendships intact than leave and go back to Brazil with no one there to welcome her home. All because of a silly argument over sushi.

“... What are they saying?” Kyle suddenly asked, awakening Brazil from her day dreams.

“Huh? What?”

Kyle glanced at her and chuckled, “The TV. Are you even paying attention?”

“Uh, no I'm not actually... sorry Kyle, I suppose I should right?”

“Nah, don't worry about it; I mean, it's funny as hell just watching this stuff without having any clue what they're talking about,” Kyle smiled and put his sushi down on the coffee table. “I mean this right here, for some reason, some big yellow thing just broke through this wall and stepped on this kid then started going on about KAREMISH whatever...”

She blinked and took one glance at the TV to see what he was talking about, but of course she had missed it and could only laugh at his description, “That sounds familiar. I'm sure I've seen that ad on a big compilation video of Japanese commercials on YouTube..."

As Maggie went to reach for her slice of pizza, there was a sudden knock at their door. She looked over at it and got up before Kyle did, telling him to “sit his ass down and relax" in his blanket. Grabbing a paper towel to wipe her face and her fingers, she approached the door and unlocked it, pulling it open to see Michael standing on the other side. He looked irritated, as usual.

“Oh, hi Michael,” she said, catching Kyle's attention from the couch and he wrapped himself further in his blanket like a cocoon. “You alright?”

Oh god what was he doing back? Even him just standing in the doorway fucked the atmosphere of the entire room up.

“I'm miserable, thanks for asking. Uh listen, did I tell you guys how much your rent was gonna be when you first arrived?” Michael asked, shoving his hands into his pocket.

Kyle wasn't used to seeing Michael without that stupid cane he used to have. He started wondering what had become of the thing, though his thoughts quickly went to places that he didn't expect; what if he had sold it for drugs? What if it had a gun in it and he used it to hold up liquor stores and banks? What if he had used his cane to bash some poor old lady's head in?

Well actually, scratch that. 

Michael hated life but he wasn't about to murder anyone. That much Kyle was sure of.

“Oh, no you didn't actually,” she responded, rubbing the back of her head. “Kyle was actually wanting to know more than me, he's starting to worry already.”

“No I haven't Mag, quit throwing me under the bus here!” Kyle snapped with his mouth full of his salmon sushi, sending bits of rice and seaweed all over his lap.

“Right, whatever. Anyway, I got off the phone with my boss to verify all that shit and he told me that your rent every month will be $405,” the goth replied, still holding his hands in his pockets as if trying to keep them warm. “Or 50,000 yen or some shit. You okay with that?”

Maggie blinked and shrugged before nodding, “Yeah I mean, we haven't got much of a choice... we kind of can't pick up and move out onto the streets... Thanks Michael, we appreciate it.”

She smiled at him. Michael shrugged and sighed, as if he was already bored with the conversation.

“Yeah whatever. Anyway, gotta go. Bye.” 

Maggie and Kyle had only been living in the apartment for a few days, but Michael was already feeling the life force being sucked from him every time he interacted with them. Just talking to people like that was suffocating. Even telling Maggie that he forgot to tell her what their rent was was annoying. She looked at him with such a look of, “Oh man thanks!” every time she spoke to him.

It was annoying. SHE was annoying.

And Kyle was just another case all on his own. He was probably ten times more annoying than she was. Michael detested the look of upbeat hope that he had on his face every time he passed him by in the corridor, as if he actually had something meaningful to live for. 

Preppy conformists assholes. They had more energy than he could ever hope to muster. He needed a break from them.

“So...” Maggie turned to Kyle after closing the door. “Is there any particular reason why I'm still having to deal with Michael? He's not gonna bite your head off you know, he's just our landlord.”

Kyle shuddered as he put his empty packaging down, shaking his head. Even just thinking about Michael gave him the chills, as if there was something more off-putting to him other than his dead eyes and personality.

“Ugh, he's just creepy, that's all. Once I get used to him, I'll start dealing with him! Anyway,” he mumbled, snuggling into his hoodie and pressing his mouth against the fabric. “He hasn't changed at all since school. It's just weird.”

Maggie looked him; he didn't seem to be adjusting well to the climate of Tokyo. He regularly complained of headaches and had at least two bottles of water with him at all times, commenting that he often felt dehydrated. He wasn't getting any better – he began swelling up the day after he arrived in Tokyo and it only seemed to get worse as time went on, his fingers swollen to the point of inability to press a small button on the television remote.  
Of course, Kyle was always told that something would “have to get worse before it could get better”, but confining himself to the apartment for a few days couldn't possibly make him any worse than he already was.

“おげんきですか？” she asked, sitting beside him and inspecting his fingers, noticing that they had deflated a little bit since she last looked at them.

“Huh? Oh, yeah I'm fine...” he mumbled, managing to decipher what she said from her actions. “I've still got that headache...”

Kyle was sickly, and he always had been. She had discovered this much when he rambled on about how often he was in the hospital for life-threatening illnesses when he was younger for instances including, but not limited to; chicken pox, kidney failure, hemorrhoids and AIDs (thanks to a “son of a bitch” named Cartman).  
Acclimatization had just been added to the list. While not life-threatening, it was more annoying than anything else and it made his first few days in Japan unpleasant.

“Tell you what,” she smiled and stood up, making him look up at her in confusion. “I'll go out and get you some more painkillers, and considering you look like a dejected balloon animal, you might get some funny looks so just stay here.”

His face scrunched up at her description of him and he waved his swollen hand, “Yeah, that'd be great. Can you also try to find some antiseptic cream or something? There's a bit of cracking in the webbing of my fingers...”

She rolled her eyes in response and grabbed her bag from off the hook it was hanging on, “Jesus Christ, when I agreed to be your roommate, I didn't think that also meant being your mother for the first few days here.”

“Just shut up and get it please,” Kyle grumbled into the blanket, closing his eyes and laying his head on the couch arm.

“Luckily for you, I still have some money leftover, but not that much – we have to start finding jobs and getting some support,” she replied, grabbing her key and walking towards the door. “I'm locking the door. If Michael comes back, just be calm and ask what the problem is. Bats aren't going to fly out of his mouth you know.”

As she left, Kyle scrunched his face up again and imitated her before grabbing the remote and turning the volume up on the television programme he was watching. At that moment, a call began to come through from his Skype. He glanced at the caller's name and realised it was Stan. There were times where he was happy to see Stan's name, and this just happened to be one of those times, especially after the first few days he's had in Japan.

“Hi dude,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

“Oh whoa, you look like shit man!” Stan screeched over the webcam, leaning in closer to see the swelling on Kyle's cheeks. “What the hell happened?”

“Well Stan, the climate here fucking sucks, and it's not constantly snowing like it does back home,” he spat bitterly, grabbing his blanket and holding it over his head. He reminded Stan of Kenny, and both chuckled quietly when they saw how Kyle looked in their webcams.

“Sucks dude,” his friend replied, tugging on the string of his own hoodie. “I just called to see how it was going over there, considering that we haven't spoken since you arrived. It's been the usual shit this way, so I thought I'd check up on you. Maybe you're doing better than I am.”

Kyle laughed, “You don't need to explain your thought process to me Stan, but I appreciate it dude. It's been fine, Mag and I are just chilling out for now before we start job hunting and stuff. We met our land-- OH DUDE. OUR LANDLORD.”

Stan jumped at Kyle's sudden excitement, which shook the webcam like crazy, “What, what? What's wrong with him? Her? Whatever the fuck?”

“It's Michael!!” As it turned out, Stan never learned the names of the goth kids when he was hanging out with them, so Kyle was presented with a look of confusion from him. “You know? Tall curly haired goth guy?”

“What?! What the fuck is he doing there?!”

“I have no fucking clue, yet for some goddamn reason, he's our landlord, of all the fucking people on the planet!” Kyle raised his hands over his head dramatically. “And guess what? He's still freaky and gothic! IT'S FUCKING WEIRD.”

“What, he must be a little bit older than us right? So, he's essentially still the same person, just a little bit taller?”

The red-head nodded, shrugging one of his shoulders up, “More or less. It's really weird Stan, like, REALLY fucking weird. Maggie's had to deal with him because looking at him just gives me the creeps.”

Stan smiled his most “oh well” smile that he possibly could and looked down on his desk at something, “Well, at least you don't have to see him that often. He's just a landlord right?”

“Pfft...” Kyle sighed, barely noticing what Stan was looking at. He looked down and rubbed his head; maybe he was overreacting... “Yeah, you're right actually dude. I'm being pretty stupid... then again the swelling and the headaches don't help with my mood...”

“Obviously," Stan spat jokingly, looking back up at the webcam and smiling at his old friend. "You grumpy piece of shit."

\---------

The streets of Tokyo were well-lit, something different and comforting from some of the horrendously lit streets in Brazil that she was used to, especially where she lived. At least here, she didn't need to wear a reflective jacket; safe or not, those things were hideous.  
She made her way to the apartments with a plastic bag of the items balloon-Kyle needed. Of course she was suffering the effects of living in a new climate, but she was nowhere near as bad as Kyle was, and she figured that the best thing she could do was tend to him first over herself.

As she approached the gate, she noticed a dark shadowed figure standing under one of the lamp posts. Upon closer inspection, she realised that it was just Michael smoking yet another cigarette. 

She attempted to avoid him, but he spotted her before she could.

“What are you doing out?” he asked, not bothering to approach her from where he was. “It's late.”

“Oh. Just getting stuff for Kyle, he's sick,” she answered, opening the gate to the apartment block. “He's not really managing to adjust to the climate here, he's like a hot-air balloon...”

He snickered, which both confused and irritated her. She understood that their history wasn't the best, but they weren't exactly sworn enemies. Perhaps the dislike was mutual between them. Great. Just what they all needed.

“Yeah I was like that too, such a fucking conformist sickness,” Michael responded as he threw the cigarette down onto the concrete and ground it with the tip of his shoe. “You get used to it. Just need a shitload of water and keep an eye on the weather updates.”

Maggie blinked and nodded, looking down into the bag that held the items for him. She had more than enough painkillers for him, and water was never scarce as long as they managed to pay their water bill on time.

“I'll tell him to keep an eye on the weather, he keeps changing his clothes like a crazy person,” she answered, holding onto the bars of the gate to keep it open. It was a rather windy night out.

“You mean like a preppy conformist?”

She blinked and shook her head. He used that word so often, she wasn't sure if he knew what it actually meant, “What does that even mean?”

Michael looked at her and shrugged, retrieving his cigarette pack from his pocket, “You know. People that always follow stupid trends and bullshit like that to keep up with their stupid as fuck friends. It's pathetic.”

“Well yeah that is pretty, like, sheep-like I guess. Although some people just like to belong. I guess you're not really one of them,” she replied dully, adjusting her grip on the plastic bag as she turned her head towards the apartment building.

He grabbed a hold of the gate for her and opened it fully, looking her straight in the eye. At that moment as she looked at him, she understood Kyle's discomfort– the aura Michael exuded was unsettling, and when he looked at Maggie, it was as if he was looking right through her to her bare soul. Being a goth for 90% of his life must have given him that strange edge that seemed to freak Kyle out so much.

“Are you going in or am I gonna be standing here holding this like a fucking statue?”

Taken aback, Maggie raised her eyebrow at his comment and frowned a little before she turned her back on him and walked towards the lobby of the apartments. Michael frowned as he watched her and shook his head. 

She was so annoying.


	4. ともだち (Chapter 4)

Kyle's condition had improved greatly by the time Monday had rolled around. No longer was he a balloon, and he slowly began to resemble the skinny little Jew man that he once was. Although the swelling had receded a bit, the headaches continued to linger and plague him.  
However, at least now, Kyle could leave the apartment and look around the building, and even get to know some of his neighbours a little bit. They were all very nice people, even the ones that couldn't speak fluent English, though he frequently found himself questioning the genuine kindness they displayed.

After all, he was from South Park; people there tended to be rude for basically no reason.  
The out-of-nowhere compassion from his neighbours made him suspicious.

Kyle still found himself being creeped out by Michael. He couldn't shake the chills that he got from even just thinking about him, and he regularly talked to Maggie about how he felt as if Michael was constantly watching them.

“Dude, he's our landlord,” she would say every time he brought the topic up. “It's his job to make sure we don't screw his apartment up. Just chill! It's fine man! Don't get yourself worked up over it!”

Kyle always liked imitating her whenever she said that to him, and found himself doing so on the Skype call to his mother.

“Kyle, bubhie, are you okay?” his mother asked, looking confused when his face scrunched up to mock Maggie. “Did you hear what I just said about Ike?”

“Huh? Oh yeah ma I'm fine!” he responded, sitting up on his couch properly. “Sorry, it's just that I tend to do that when Maggie alks to me about our landlord...”

“Oh yes, how is she? We haven't met her at all yet bubhie!” Sheila smiled and attempted to look around and behind Kyle to see if his roommate was hiding from her.

“She's gone out for the day ma, she apparently has this friend that she met in high school that lives here,” he grabbed his book that he was reading and placed it on his lap, ready to begin reading again once the call was over. “I don't know when she'll be back though. Anyway, what was that about Ike?"

“He graduated last Friday! We're so proud of him! His certificate is hanging on his wall, and he's going to sleep over with friends tonight to celebrate!"

Going to sleep... over?

“Hah, you might wanna keep an eye out on him ma, Ike went through that big rebellious phase remember? He might not be out of it just yet, he's only 18,” Kyle chuckled, remembering how often he'd see Gerald walking through the front door with Ike by the ear, reprimanding him for being out so late and being high on weed.

“Oh I'm sure he is bubhie, just have a little bit of faith in him,” she sighed sadly as she looked at him. “I miss you lots...”

“I miss you guys too, so much! But, I have to do this ma, I just have to wait until I get used to the weather in this place, then I can go out and start looking for work. I think I read on Maggie's contract that if we moved in the middle of a month, which we did, we'd have to pay prorated rent for the first month, so partial rent... I think... Whatever, we'll figure it out.”

Sheila smiled happily and clenched her hands together, “I''m so so so proud of you Kyle! I know you can do well there, and I know you can make it. Tell Maggie I said hello, okay? And I want to meet her Kyle!! Next time I call, she better be there!”

He laughed and shook his head, “Ma! She's just a roommate, we're not dating!”

“Not yet!”

“OH GOD, please just stop ma seriously,” he chuckled and rubbed the bridge of his nose, reminding her of how he used to show his frustration when he was younger.

As he was about to ask about the status of his father, he heard a knock at the door. Looking up, he blinked and quickly ended the call with his mother, promising that he'll Skype with them more often. She bid him goodbye and kissed the screen before he shut his laptop off and walked over to answer the door, clad only in his boxers and t-shirt.  
His stomach dropped when he saw who was on the other side.

“Inspection time Broflovski,” Michael deadpanned, clutching a clipboard to his side. He looked bored, as usual.

“What? Already? But it's only been a week!” Kyle spouted, involuntarily moving to the side to let him in.

Michael turned his head and stared Kyle down, his cross earring gleaming at him almost ominously. There was that look that Kyle hated so much, and he was sure that Maggie had felt it on her at some point as well.

“It's been two. You moved in two Monday's ago, remember? And if you don't, I have the calendar,” the goth responded, producing a calendar for the current month from under the papers on his clipboard. 

He inspected it and blinked – well that was embarrassing. Kyle rubbed his head, blaming his sickness for his lack of time awareness. That, however, still didn't deviate from the fact that Kyle was now alone in his apartment with the man who had been creeping him out for two weeks, and he moved backwards towards the wall, as far from Michael as he could possibly get himself.

“Now,” Michael said out of nowhere, putting the sheet away. “Are you going to let me do my job or are you going to have to wait outside?”

Their relationship was nowhere positive, but the last thing Kyle wanted was Michael rummaging through his stuff without his supervision. It seemed as if the goth was just about ready to kick both of them out, despite the fact that neither Kyle or Maggie had done anything to infuriate him. If he found anything that was even slightly incriminating, Kyle and Maggie could kiss their apartment goodbye.  
He wasn't about to let that happen.

“I'm staying,” he said, glaring daggers at the goth.

“Pfft. Conformist,” Michael spat as he retrieved a pen from his ear and began to look around.

It was just a simple inspection, something that he'd have to get used to for the rest of the time that he was living here. It was Michael's rules – well, actually, Michael's boss's rules, and Kyle was never one for breaking the rules, no matter how much he disliked the man who enforced them. All he could do was watch as Michael began to look through the room with a theoretical fine-toothed comb. 

He went over to the couch and misplaced the cushions, looking at, behind and under them. When he found nothing, Michael made a note and moved on to the coffee table. He picked up some plastic packaging and held it up towards Kyle, his eyes disturbingly lifeless.

“What's this?”

“Sushi packaging,” Kyle responded truthfully, inwardly kicking himself at leaving the plastic containers for his sushi all throughout the apartment during his sick days. “I was sick and I pretty much just lived on sushi...”

“Huh, okay,” Michael went over and threw the packaging in the bin for him, making Kyle kick himself even more. He didn't need Michael cleaning up after him.

“How long is this gonna take exactly?” Kyle asked as he moved aside to avoid getting too close to him.

“A few minutes, maybe half an hour if you've got shit in here that you can't verify,” Michael responded, shuffling into the bedroom and bathroom areas while keeping his back to Kyle. “Sit there and be a conformist quietly for fucks sake.”

Kyle angrily went over and adjusted the cushions to how he liked them, irritated that Michael didn't at least attempt to put them back to how they were before. He couldn't be sure if the goth had a hatred for him in particular, or if he was just like that towards everyone. His mind began to wander, and he began thinking that he might have offended him in some way back in elementary school and Michael still hadn't forgiven it for him.  
Did goths even hold grudges? Against the world, sure, but against people? Did they even care that much about people?

Michael walked out a little while later holding onto Maggie's prized teddy bear. Kyle looked over and saw him with it and stood up, holding his hand up. 

“Whoa, what are you doing with that?! You can't take that! That's Maggie's! She'll go fucking crazy if she finds it missing!”

“It might have drugs in it Broflovski, we have to be sure,” he deadpanned, holding the teddy underneath his arm. “If there's no drugs in it, I'll return it by the time she gets back from... wherever the hell she is. Just calm down and let me do my conformist as hell job.”

“I thought you hated your job,” Kyle spat, not seemingly able to hold his temper back. “You seem like you do, and you'd probably be happier without it, right?”

“I do hate it,” Michael replied dully. “I'd rather be out drinking my coffee than being here inspecting your apartment, and not at Starbucks either. Shit's all over the place. But I don't believe in happiness, so just shut up and sit there, dickhole.”

It was pure torture having to deal with Michael. If he didn't give a shit then why was he there? Wasn't holding full time work “conformist” anyway? Considering everyone else did it to support themselves, why not something less conforming – like a drug cartel? Kyle was so confused, but he would rather just let him do his job and get out quicker than have to put up with his issues, so he resumed his seat on the couch and watched as Michael walked into the kitchen, the final room for inspection.

He heard the fridge door open, and suddenly all hell broke loose.

“Broflovski!” Michael yelled, which was the loudest noise Kyle had ever heard him make since he first arrived. “Come here a minute.”

Kyle obeyed without question and when he walked into the kitchen, he saw Michael holding up glass vials, syringes and pill bottles.

“What are these?”

Kyle looked at him for a moment then glanced at the pills, vials and syringes before rolling his eyes, “It's my insulin. I'm diabetic.”

Michael glanced at the vials then looked back at Kyle with that creepy look again, as if trying to see if he really was telling the truth. The suffocating glare that Michael seemed to perfect was ideal for getting people to tell the truth, not that he really needed to use that ability all that much until this very moment.

“Really?”

“Really,” the Jew responded immediately, going over to snatch some of the vials from his hand. “Look, Novolin, Humulin. Look see, “regular human insulin injection”. Those are the short-acting ones, the longer-acting ones are back there.”

Michael looked at him again before getting his clipboard out and writing down on the piece of paper he had brought with him. Kyle looked at him and widened his eyes, suddenly panicked that he might write down the wrong information. He tried to grab the clipboard from Michael's hands.

“IT'S NOT STEROIDS YOU ASSHOLE!”

“I know it's not steroids Broflovski, calm the fuck down,” Michael replied, turning the clipboard to show him that he had clearly written “Broflovski's insulin in the fridge” on one of the comment lines. Kyle felt calmness creep in over the anxiety and he sighed, shaking his head.

“Thanks man, I thought for sure you'd write down that it was steroids and get us thrown out,” he said, walking back out into the main area as Michael finished his search in the kitchen.

“I'm doing my job properly, I'm not exactly an asshole landlord who just wants tenants evicted for no reason,” the goth replied as he left the kitchen, still holding onto Maggie's teddy bear. “Anyway, I don't have the go ahead on my own to throw you out, even if I wanted to. My boss does. Conformist.”

Kyle blinked as Michael went over to the door and opened it.

“When are you gonna give the teddy back?”

Michael turned his head and looked at Kyle again, one eyebrow raised, “When I've made sure that your roommate hasn't hidden any drugs in it.”

“There aren't any drugs in there...” the Jew muttered, grabbing his book that fell onto the ground when Michael flipped the cushions around. “She's not a druggie.”

“You don't know that, and neither do I.”

With that, Michael left the apartment and shut the door behind him, not bothering to wish Kyle a good day, or even a simple goodbye. Kyle sighed but still felt his relief upon Michael correctly naming the “paraphernalia” that was in the fridge. He could have easily written down any other form of drugs and gotten Kyle and Maggie thrown out. Maybe Maggie was right, maybe Michael wasn't as bad as Kyle continued to make him out to be.

He sighed and looked down at the book and realised that his bookmark had fallen out. With a groan, he closed his eyes and rubbed his face.

“FUCK! I lost my page!!”

\---------

It was evening when Maggie finally arrived home, holding a small tote bag of knick knacks and what nots from her friend. When she turned around from locking the door behind her, she saw Kyle sitting on the couch looking out at the city through the window behind the couch, admiring the way the city looked during the dark hours.

“こんばんわ、ともだち！” she cheered, walking over to him and running her hand through his hair.

“Agh!” Kyle turned and looked at her with his eyes wide before calming when he saw who it was. He chuckled along with her and stood up straight, “Good evening, my friend to you too.”

“Hey listen,” she put the tote bag down on the couch behind Kyle as she grabbed his arm. “I found out through Yoko that pet groomers are pretty much, like, hella wanted here, so I was thinking that I could start applying to some of the places around here. I also found out that some law practise actually want some foreign lawyers, since, according to Yoko, they handle law a bit differently here than they do in America. Some foreign expertise might be of some help?”

“Okay first off, who's Yoko?”

She looked at him and laughed, “My friend that I went to see today. Sheesh...”

“Oh right... yeah, thanks for the heads up actually, I'll start looking into it now that I'm feeling better,” Kyle said as he started inspecting some of the items in the tote bag. “Didn't really wanna get my resume out there looking like some dejected party balloon animal.”

Maggie smiled and walked into her bedroom to get changed. As he was inspecting a bag of strong smelling incense, Kyle suddenly stopped and closed his eyes – he had forgotten to tell her about Michael taking her teddy bear, and within a few seconds, he heard her running out of the bedroom.

For the second time that day, all hell had broken loose.

“Where's Pete?!” she asked, totally panicked. Her eyes shot all throughout the apartment and she began to look under the couch cushions, messing them up and throwing them onto the ground.

Oh god, not again.

“Oh shit I forgot to tell you Mag – uh, Michael came around today for inspection and he, uh, took... your teddy. Wait. Your teddy's named Pete?”

“He took Pete?” she knew that it was common for criminals to hide drugs in soft toys, but while she understood, she was still upset. “Oh... drugs, right?”

Kyle sighed and nodded, “Yeah. Sorry Maggie... he said he'd give him back once he verified that there weren't drugs in it.”

Maggie sat down and looked through the tote bag, pulling a smaller pink teddy bear with white polka dots out, “Well he better hurry up... I can't really sleep without him. And DON'T give me that look Broflovski, I know you still sleep in that silly hat of yours.”

Kyle's attachment to his green ushanka was probably something that would never fade away, considering it was almost attached by the hems in his hair in his childhood. He smiled at her, satisfied with the feeling of being attached to an inanimate object and knowing that he was with someone who could relate to him and wouldn't judge him for it. 

“My hat's not silly actually, so fuck you!”

\---------

The tag on the teddy bear's tail told Michael that its name was “Pete”. He felt that disgusting twinge of familiarity hit him, and he started to think back to what it was like hanging out with the rest of his friends back in South Park. How it was just the four of them against everyone and everything else in the world, and how it all seemed to make sense.

Ew.  
He was reminiscing. It was gross and conformist.

Michael put the teddy bear down on his office desk and reached down to grab a craft knife from the bottom drawer. Whether he liked it or not, he still had a job to do, and the scare with finding Broflovski's insulin in the fridge meant that there could be something in the teddy bear. Maybe more insulin, or maybe some weed. Whatever it was, he had to be sure.  
Opening the blade, Michael turned and looked down towards Pete before placing the tip of the knife against the chest.

He hesitated for a moment and inwardly cursed himself, “God-fucking-damnit, it's just a stupid bear you idiot.”

A countdown from ten didn't help, trying to fool himself that the bear's name wasn't Pete didn't help, trying to fool himself that the bear didn't belong to Maggie didn't help. Michael retracted the blade and threw it on the ground angrily, glaring at the bear before picking it up and inspecting it.  
He squeezed the tummy to feel for any plastic bags, but got a shock when it suddenly squeaked cutely in response to him pressing his fingers against the mechanism buried in the stuffing.

“Agh, fuck!” he cursed, looking at the bear with big eyes. He glared at the bear and shook it angrily, “Stupid fucking bear. Look at you. With your missing eye and missing clumps of fur...”

Regardless of missing bits of his anatomy, Pete continued to look happy. His stitched mouth was still curled into a happy smile, and his arms were out as if expecting a never ending hug. He could literally feel the love and happiness exuding from Pete, and it made Michael sick.  
He put it down onto the desk and continued to curse himself for not being able to slice it open.

“... You're missing, like, parts of your anatomy...” he mumbled as he stared at it with his head in his hand, his other hand instinctively reaching for another cigarette to smoke. He sighed. “That's real pain right there Pete...”


	5. きもい (Chapter 5)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not exactly my most favourite chapter, but the whole "looking for a job" thing has to be done. I mean, I can't exactly have Kyle and Maggie end up with jobs out of the blue, we need some build up people!
> 
> This chapter also introduces Cartman in the form of creepy messages, but he'll make a physical appearance much later on in the story, so be alert people! :)

For the first time since Maggie and Kyle arrived, the apartment was empty. With Kyle having finally recovered from his illness, he could finally get out and explore, as well as job hunt at the same time. It was perfect, killing two birds with one stone, as horrible of an analogy that is.

Again, Maggie had left without telling him where she had gone to, although he suspected that she had followed her friend up on her offer for more tea, or at least more information about the pet grooming that she had told her about. 

“I can't believe they can groom cats too...” Kyle mumbled to himself as he walked along the city streets, his cellphone in his hand ready to snap pictures to show his friends and family. “How do you even bathe cats...”

Whatever. Right now, a job was a job, and rent was due within a few weeks. Of course they could salvage some of it with what funds they had left, but they would require so much more if they wanted to keep the apartment. He began thinking; rent was just one aspect of it, there were also the utility bills, the inspections, there'll no doubt be some issues of late payment of rent that they'll have to sort out...  
At the pressure, Kyle began to rethink the notion that he was ever actually ready for such a huge task. 

“Typical of you KAHL,” Kyle jumped at hearing Eric's voice in his head before face palming. Years of being exposed to Cartman's stupidity and ridiculous behaviour had almost given the Jew an entirely rewired brain fitted with his best frenemy's voice at the helm. “Get freaked out over everything! Typical fucking Jew. Pussy.”

He growled angrily and continued to walk ahead through the large hordes of people. 

Cartman still managed to get him, even in the safest of moments. He was out among tons of people, about around 10 hours away from California yet loops of Cartman's constant tormenting in his head from his childhood continued to play through his head. 

It was ridiculous. 

He'd rather Kenny's voice, and he was still in the slammer for meth possession. There was a big difference however; Kenny was a good person deep down, and Kyle knew there was something fishy about his arrest the moment it happened. Cartman is, and always will be, a shithead, no matter how often he tries to convince people otherwise.

Kyle stopped to sit down on a bench outside a large set of offices and ran his hands up his arms. The group had broken up long ago, but he still felt a strong attachment to all of them, and thinking back to them made him sick for home. He was perplexed; he found himself missing his old life so much, yet Maggie hadn't yet spoken to him at all about her life back home at all. He began wandering if her life was just bad and she wanted a new start with a clean slate, or perhaps bringing them up would only awaken the feelings.

Whatever it was she was doing, Kyle needed to start doing the same. He was here for a reason, and thinking about CARTMAN of all people shouldn't make him miss home. After all, they'd all miss him too, but they would want him to succeed.

He rose from the bench with a new sense of purpose and looked back at the building he had sat outside. 

'Jones Day'. 

As he looked closer, he realised that, by some strange stroke of luck, it was a law firm. 

He smiled and reached into his satchel to grab a copy of his CV. Language barriers aside, Kyle was positive that there was something on his CV that could appeal to the lawyers within these walls and, holding the strap of his bag tight against his chest, he walked into the firm, hoping that he still had the good luck that his parents wished him over that dinner so many weeks ago.

\---------

“No, there were no fucking drugs,” Michael paced back and forth in his office, holding Pete in his hand. The stupid bear had caused more trouble than Michael had intended, and all because he was too much of a conformist to slice it open. “Trust me Frank.”

“We can't be too sure Mike! Just rip the thing open and have a look for fucks sake!”

“I can't,” he replied, placing Pete back down on his desk and looking at him with intense eyes. “It belongs to one of my tenants, and wasn't it you that told me not to wreck their shit cause then you'd have to pay for it?”

“Pfft, how much can a stupid stuffed bear cost?”

“Nothing. But I don't want those two lame-os on my case. I felt around it, and I didn't hear any crinkling or felt any plastic. I just got suspicious cause I found Broflovski's insulin in the fridge and I thought that the bear could have something in it, alright?”

“Insulin?”

Michael rolled his eyes. What a dickhole.

“Broflovski's diabetic,” he answered, growing irritated with Frank's stupidity. “Don't they have insulin injections and shit where you're from?”

“Fine. If it bothers you that much, take the stupid bear back to them. But you have to talk to them about the importance of not having drugs in that apartment. I mean it Mike! Don't start skipping out on your responsibilities!”

Michael hung up the phone and, with a look of disgust on his face, carelessly chucked it onto his desk.

“Conformist,” he mumbled, grabbing his cigarette pack and lighting up yet another one in his mouth. He looked over at Pete, who was sitting against a paper tray on his desk. 

Upon his eyes on him, the bear's head drooped slightly to the side. He nodded, “Yeah you said it Pete.”

\---------

Maggie walked through Yoko's studio with her arm interlocked with hers, glancing around with her eyes wide and glittering from the beauty of her art. She knew that Yoko was talented when it came to sculpturing, which she made very clear in school, but she had managed to hone her craft to perfection when she arrived back in Japan.

“You have GOT to teach me some tricks,” Maggie mumbled as she went over and touched one; a metal silhouette of two lovers embracing. “Did you teach yourself?”

Yoko shrugged as she went over to inspect the work with her friend, “More or less, ya! It's not really bad, it's like drawing!”

Maggie scoffed, “Huh, you know how crap I am at that, it's like I haven't aged past 5 when it comes to drawing. Don't even know why I was in art...”

It was a bit of reminiscing for Yoko, her thoughts returning to high school and how often Maggie was forced to draw in art class and simply refused to show her work. It wasn't bad, but admittedly, it wasn't good either. Yoko just smiled and pat Maggie's back in a friendly way.

“It was either that or drama, dance or music,” she replied, taking Maggie over to look at something else.

The Brazilian girl laughed and held onto Yoko's hand, interlocking their fingers, “Ah yes, and you and I both know I can't act, dance or sing/play music for shit.”

Yoko turned to her, feigning shock. Maggie looked at her old friend and burst out into laughter at the look on her face – so many memories of her and Yoko stuck behind in art class when school was out, working on ridiculously long projects and blaring music as loud as they could over their phones, ignoring how horrible it sounded coming from such pathetic speakers. It was a simpler time, and while Maggie didn't exactly want to go back to them, they were still fun memories to return to every once in a while.

“You were very good at dancing, I saw you one day,” Yoko reminisced, tapping her chin in mock thought.

“WHAT, you saw me?! Yoko, goddamnit, I just, like... decided to try my hand at it,” she kicked her feet against the floor of the studio. “I heard a really good song on my iPod and I suddenly just got the urge to dance to it, except it'd look really weird out in public, so you know...”

“None of the teachers ever got to see your potential, it's sad...” 

Her dancing wasn't exactly superb or ground-breaking (which was probably a good thing). It was just something she liked to do when she was alone with some really good music. As much as she ranted about hating pop, Maggie had to admit that it was the best music she could dance to.

“Oh Yoko stop, you go on about not seeing potential! You were an exchange student and you left before anyone really knew how awesome you were at, like, everything!” she smiled and approached Yoko, grabbing onto her hands. “You're lucky to be where you are right now! I just wish that a job would, like, fall into my lap...”

“A job... Ah! Grooming!”

Part of Maggie cursed herself for telling Yoko that she was only planning to stay for a few days. She didn't want to burden her clearly successful friend with constant chitchat about the past, and it seemed as if she had a good career here. The last thing Maggie wanted was to get in the way of it.

“Yeah, I have an apartment with this guy named Kyle, and we have to start paying our rent this month, along with utility bills,” she shrugged and sighed dramatically. “You know, grown up stuff.”

It was pretty easy to predict what would come out of Yoko's mouth next. It seemed to be a female reflex whenever the words “guy” and “apartment” are used in the same sentence, but the vital third word is always missing, which girls are always quick to provide, as Yoko giggled and whispered;

“Is he single?”

“Oh my god, yes I'm sure he is,” Maggie stopped for a bit. “Maybe? I dunno, maybe he left a girlfriend back in South Park...”

Yoko smiled and walked over to a miniature mansion within her studio, “I mentioned pet grooming is like really wanted here, right? Everyone loves their dogs and cats looking all cootsy wootsy! So...”

Maggie's eyes nearly bugged out of her head upon seeing the fluffy monstrosity that Yoko produced from the miniature mansion. The breed was completely lost on her, all it seemed to look like was a ball of fluff that had escaped some sort of institution. She raised her finger to say something but couldn't find the words.

“How about you test your skills on Chi-Chi here? She's very nice, but she's scared of water! But, that's typical for a cat, right?”

It was a cat.  
Oh god.

\---------

Michael twirled his key on the keychain as he approached room 114 with Pete still in his hand. He was going to return this blasted teddy bear if it was the last thing he did. Who knew stuffed animals could lead to so many problems between a landlord and his supposed boss? As long as there were no drugs in the thing, it was probably alright to put it back where he found it.  
He approached the door and knocked, believing that Kyle was still inside suffering from his acclimatisation sickness.

“... Broflovski? Maggie? Open the door.”

No answer. 

He blinked and used his key to unlock the door himself, twisting the knob and walking in. The room was at least clean, Kyle had apparently cleaned up all of the plastic packaging that was lying on the coffee table when Michael last visited. It would have pleased him if he cared enough, but once again, he found himself just wanting to do his job and leaving as soon as he could. Michael walked down the short corridor leading to the bedrooms and placed Pete on Maggie's bed, frowning a bit.

“Pete. Fucking hell...”

Michael glanced up in the corner and found that Maggie had hung up a wind chime consisting of steel bars and butterflies. He went over and flicked it with his finger, listening to the pretty tones and noises that it made across the room. He listened for a minute...

It was beautiful.

…

Michael stopped his thought process before it could go on any longer in its current direction. He frowned, irritated once again. He grabbed one of the pipes to stop the noise; the longer it went on, the more it grated on his nerves.

As far as tenants go, at least these two didn't seem to bother him with pointless calls and multiple text messages worrying about basically nothing. It was too often that he had that happening, but luckily for him, the tenant in question had decided to move after he told her that she was a “fucking conformist bag of dicks”. Call it immature if you want, but she “kinda deserved it”.

He walked out into the main room and noticed Kyle's laptop was open and still on his Skype. Michael scoffed and went to walk towards the door, grabbing the knob as he got closer.

“Skype's colour should have totally been black, fuck all this blue shit...”

Just as he was about to leave, Skype suddenly made some sort of strange noise behind him. Raising an eyebrow, Michael turned back to see what had happened and, against his inner goth telling him “who gives a shit, just leave”, he shuffled himself towards the laptop and bent down to have a look at what had come up on it.

It was a friends request.  
Whoever it was had also left a message, obviously to let Kyle know who it was, and one read of the message told Michael who it was within a few seconds.

“Accept it, Jew. It's been so long since our last talk”, followed by a cheeky/playful emoticon.

Oh great. 

As much as he still found Kyle and Maggie irritating, he would rather those two any day over Eric Cartman. Everyone in school knew that Cartman was pretty fucked in the head, and he regularly took his issues out on Kyle. It only got worse during high school (although giving Kyle AIDs was probably up there with some of the most fucked up things Cartman's ever done to him).  
Michael didn't know for sure, given that he didn't care about Kyle or Cartman's antics in school, but he recalled many rumours that would fly around South Park High about the fat man, including that he was homosexual and lusted after Kyle, explaining his sick obsession with him. He also heard that Cartman was a homophobe, so he would have either hated himself or buried his sexual desires if the earlier rumour was actually true.

Whatever the case, Cartman was a basket case. Michael hoped that he wouldn't be coming to Japan any time soon and start bothering his tenants. 

Or worse, him.

He just wanted to be left alone.

\---------

Maggie returned home before Kyle, which was probably a first in their friendship. However, she didn't return home as she had left it, as evident by the multiple scratches up her arms that throbbed and reddened over time. Luckily none broke the skin, but it was still an unpleasant experience.

Though at least Chi-Chi no longer resembled a mop. 

Heaving a sigh, Maggie dragged herself towards her bedroom and threw herself down onto her duvet, grabbing her heart-shaped cushion and holding it against her head. Her hands felt around the rest of the pillows, intending on making a pillow fort right on top of her head, but she jumped when she felt fur beneath her fingertips. Shocked, she looked up and saw Pete had been returned, and was sitting up against the pillows.

She beamed and instantly felt the pain in her arms vanish, replaced only by the joy of seeing her old friend, “Pete!!!”

While she held Pete against her chest, the unmistakable smell of cigarette smoke wafted into her nostrils and her eyes opened, disgust replacing the joy within a few seconds. She pulled Pete away and looked at him, her eyes narrowed in horror.

“きもい... Gross...”

She got up off the bed and sighed. Pete was old, and he'd probably fall apart if she put him in the washing machine. The only thing she could think of was to apply some of her perfume on him to mask the smell. Inwardly, she cursed at Michael for contaminating Pete, and her new found irritation forced her off her bed and into the main room, where Kyle was walking in, his satchel against his side.

“Hey Mag, what's up?”

“What's up? THIS! Smell Pete, would you?!” she held Pete at Kyle's face, who instinctively leaned back.

“Uhh, I don't really want to...”

“Kyle, seriously...”

To appease her, Kyle leaned forward and smelled, only to get a strong whiff of cigarette smoke. He frowned and coughed, waving his hand to ward the smell away. Michael had definitely had him for too long if he had come back smelling like that.

“That's fucking gross Maggie... can't you put him in the machine or something?” he asked, taking his satchel bag off and putting it in the corner with Maggie's purse. 

“I can't, he's way too old and he'll fall apart!” she sighed and looked down at Pete, gently pushing the squeaker in his tummy. “My poor bear...”

Kyle glanced back at her and saw the look of sadness that passed over her face. It hurt seeing her this way, but she did have a point. It was better to have her prized teddy bear reeking of smoke than to have her prized teddy bear in pieces at the bottom of the washing machine. He went over and took Pete from her before looking down at it and shrugging.

“You could always just leave him out where it's windy, like open a window to your room and close the door,” he offered. “Better than spraying perfume on it and making it worse...”

He handed Pete back to her and sat down, picking his laptop up and placing it on his thighs. Maggie looked at Pete for a few seconds before nodding and agreeing with his idea – spraying perfume on it would only make the smell more disgusting. Perfume and cigarette smoke? Ew. 

As she went to put her teddy bear back on her bed, Kyle suddenly made a loud noise before growling angrily. Maggie looked back at him with her eyes wide and her eyebrows raised.

“What the fuck happened?” she asked, walking over beside him to see what had caused him to freak out.

The message from Eric Cartman was still on his Skype window, waiting to be answered.


	6. おめでとございむあす (Chapter 6)

“What the fuck?! How did he-- did he hack you?!” Stan's eyes were wide in worry.

Cartman always had a way of finding out things, and it just got worse after high school when he learned how to hack computers and databases. At first it started out simply, with the occasional change of the high school web pages, along with ridiculous insults ripping into Kyle's straight As and Kenny's weed addictions on the home page. 

Everyone assumed it was just Cartman being an immature idiot who never seemed learned his lesson. Kyle and Stan didn't think to question him, believing that he was just wanting to hack Butters' computer and get more incriminating photos of him.

“I don't know!! Nothing is different on my computer, my settings are all the same...” Kyle began scrolling through some of the files on his laptop to check for any other changes. “He might not have hacked me Stan, he... he might have just found out who I was on Skype...”

“You haven't told anyone your Skype name except for me and I'm guessing your parents, and none of us have seen Cartman for, like, almost 4 years. He had to have hacked you man, you have to get some security on that thing right now dude.”

“Ugh, I will later,” right now, he didn't want to talk about Cartman possibly hacking into his computer and getting his social media information. If it persisted, he would have to go to the cops, but for now, Cartman was like a fly on the wall – best ignored. “How's it going over there dude?”

Stan stopped and looked down at his hand. It was a weird movement, and the subtlety of it caught Kyle's attention. As soon as he cleared his throat, Stan looked up and held what appeared to be a small box in front of the webcam.

“Dude... what's that?” Kyle asked, the poor quality and horrendous lighting of the room Stan was in compromised the image a bit. 

“It's... it's a ring...” 

“... Dude...”

“I'm gonna do it Kyle!! I just... I think it might be the only way to satisfy Wendy that I'm real about her! That I actually wanna be with her! I don't have any other choice!”

To say that Kyle believed Stan was insane was an understatement. Even as children, Kyle could never picture Stan being married to Wendy – both had far too many issues even at that age; Stan with his ridiculous family problems and Wendy with her blatant obsession over him. Their relationship only got more tumultuous as they got older, culminating in multiple break ups (usually followed by more reunions), drug use on Wendy's end (usually with her girlfriends) and Stan's rampant alcoholism, which only seemed to push her further away.

“You might... need to think this through a little bit more Stan, just to be sure that this is what you actually want...”

“This IS what I want Kyle, and-and I'm gonna stop doing the stupid shit I've been doing! No more football first and Wendy second,” Stan leaned down and produced a half a bottle of whiskey. “And no more of this!”

The bottle of alcohol made Kyle face palm. Stan had been drinking whiskey since he was 10, and it still managed to scare him that a 4th grader was so easily able to knock back hard liquor and outdo the 6th graders at it. As he went to respond, Kyle's cellphone suddenly rang beside him.

“Oh, sorry man, hang on, I have to take this,” Kyle rose from his couch and answered the call, staying close enough to the computer for Stan to be able to hear him.

\---------

While it felt empty sitting by himself in a cafe without his friends there with him, Michael felt at peace for the first time since he arrived in Japan. He still didn't understand what many of the words meant, aside from the usual greeting of こんいちは (although he still said it wrong, according to Frank, but what the hell does he know, who said "konnichiwa" was so specific anyway), but when he walked into a quiet cafe that actually had its name in the “English letters”, it was comforting.  
As was his coffee. Black, no sugar, strong hitting. Just the way he liked it back home. He sat near an open window and smoked his cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the chilly night air.

His cellphone vibrated on the table, letting Michael know that he had received a text message. After a quick glance through it, he rolled his eyes and put it back down.

“It's partial rent, dumbfuck... Do you even know what the hell that is? Dickhole.”

A body moving faster than the average pedestrian suddenly flew by the window that Michael was smoking out of, redirecting the path of the smoke towards them. Rude. Michael frowned and went to lean out when he noticed that the person had entered the cafe. When he looked over, ready to give chilling death glares at whoever it was, he stopped when he noticed that it was Maggie.

“Oh for fucks sake, what's she doing here? Of all the places in Tokyo...” he mumbled to himself, lowering his head and holding his arms over it in an attempt for her to not notice him. “Shit.”

Unfortunately for him, Maggie had spotted him already; then again, it was kind of difficult not to. Michael the only person in the cafe who looked even remotely goth, and he was also the only person smoking out of the only open window, given that he had to compromise with the staff. With her styrofoam coffee cup, she sat down beside him and put her iPod on the table next to his phone.

“... What are you doing?” Michael asked, turning his head to look at her between his bicep and his forearm.

She glanced at him and shrugged, lifting the cup to her lips, “I'm drinking my coffee, what's it look like I'm doing?”

Maggie didn't need to say much more on the matter, Michael could tell from looking at her outfit; a white hoodie, yoga pants and trainers. Her black hair was in a tight bun that almost seemed to be cutting off the circulation to her brain. She was jogging.

Ew. Exercise.

“Pfft, you sure you should be drinking coffee when you're out running around like a dumb conformist?” he spat, grabbing his own coffee and drinking it in sync with her and quickly stopping himself when he noticed.

She glanced at him and put the cup down on the table next to his phone, “Yeah I am sure, the caffeine does wonders for the whole “wanting to run fast” thing,”

Michael rolled his eyes and turned away from her while he sipped his coffee and took another drag from his cigarette. He had no idea what it was that she wanted to run away from, and he didn't care enough to ask. If it meant sitting in silence for the rest of the time she was there with him, then so be it.

\---------

Stan looked down at the engagement ring he had picked out for Wendy; it was a single amethyst surrounded by small diamonds encrusted on a golden band. It was simple but just elegant enough to win her affections back. He looked back to the webcam and noticed that Kyle still hadn't returned, yet continued to hear snippets of the conversation in the background.

“-- om Colorado, yes... oh, I'm not too sure... y-yes...”

Stan had to admit, it was weird not being around Kyle for as long as they've been apart. They were basically best friends for the first half of their life, although both knew it could have been worse. Reaching high school, they could have totally just ignored each other and made different sets of friends.  
At least that didn't happen.

Stan jumped when the weird quality of Kyle's microphone amplified the sudden cheer of happiness that escaped Kyle's mouth.

“Oh, that's great! Yes! Thank you so much, I appreciate the offer sir! Thank you very much! ありがとございます！Thank you!”

The webcam rattled like crazy when Kyle jumped onto the couch from wherever he was on the couch, holding his hands in his hair in some sort of fit of excitement.

“What the hell was that dude?” Stan asked, his eyes wide at the scene of Kyle launching himself onto the couch.

“It was one those law offices I took my CV into,” Kyle said in a high pitched voice, making Stan snicker. “A few days ago I was walking around and I decided to start handing copies of my CV into some of the law firms and offices I saw around here. They want an interview with me on Thursday!”

“Oh that's great dude, congratulations!” Stan smiled then stopped, looking as if he was waiting for something. “Um... how do you say “congratulations” in Japanese?”

Kyle blinked and looked down at the Japanese dictionary he had laying beside him – he had hardly used it, much to his shame. He opened the book and after a few seconds of flipping, pointed at a word and attempted to say it.

“Ome – deto – gozai – masu,” if he were a disembodied voice, Kyle was positive that he would detest the way that he just said that word. He held the book up to the webcam to show Stan the characters, but they were completely lost on him. おめでとございます. Or something.

“Whoa, okay, I think I'll just stick with congratulations in English-- if that's not offensive that is,” he chuckled and rubbed the back of his head before sighing. “So... do you really think that it's a bad idea that I... well, propose to Wendy?”

The idea that Stan was wanting to propose to Wendy suddenly hit Kyle like a ton of bricks. He had forgotten all about his best friend's plans in the wake of being asked to attend the job interview. After marking the date on his calendar, Kyle sighed and looked back at Stan, who sat with a look of sad confusion on his face.

“I just think that... you should think it over a little bit longer, just to be totally sure that this is what you want, cause... like, it might... blow up in your face...” he had to tread carefully, Stan tended to overreact when people attempted to tell him how to feel. 

Plus, if he Kyle being honest with his best friend, Wendy's reaction would most likely be either one of two extremes; she would either accept and plaster Stan's proposal and the ring all over her social media pages for all her friends to see, or she would harshly reject him and crush his heart, hopes and dreams all in one go.

As much as he tried to deny it, Stan was still emotionally fragile, and Kyle just wanted to make sure he was going to be okay, regardless of the outcome.

“... I get where you're coming from Kyle, and...” the black haired man sighed in defeat. “Okay, I'll think about it for a little bit more, but I'm pretty sure that this is what I want.”

Kyle shrugged and put his hands up, “Well if you're totally sure then the only thing I can say to you is good luck dude, and I hope it goes well!”

Stan smiled and nodded, holding the velvet box and inspecting the ring closely, as if looking for any imperfections in the jewels. Everything had to be perfect.

“Thank you dude... and hey, the shit with Cartman hacking you will get better, just get those security programmes on your computer,” he put the box down and removed his poofball hat to ruffle his hair. “And good luck with the interview! I'm sure you'll do fine, it's academic shit, you were always killer at that.”

Kyle shrugged and chuckled in response, “Thanks man, good luck seems to have been shining on me so far... just hope that continues...”

His Skype dinged with another message, and one look at what it read made Kyle's stomach drop and his anger rise.

“I see that you still haven't accepted Jew. You better get to it quickly, I'm not going anywhere.”

\---------

The waitress walked towards Michael and Maggie's table and placed a coffee pot of hot black coffee down. She began speaking Japanese to both, assuming immediately that both understood, but she quickly stopped when she was given a look of boredom from Michael.

“Coffee?”

Michael blinked and nodded, waving the hand that held his cigarette between his fingers, “Oh yeah...”

Maggie bowed her head in respect as the waitress placed the coffee pot down onto the table before leaving, wiping her hands together as she walked back behind the counter. Michael shot her a look as he grabbed the coffee pot and poured some of the liquid into his now empty mug.

“Why are you still sitting here? Shouldn't you be at home with that other lame-o?”

She looked over at him and grabbed her styrofoam cup, feeling that the weight and heat had diminished. Luckily for him, she was about to leave anyway. No point sitting around with no coffee, and when she saw what type of coffee Michael drank, she was thankful – she didn't do black coffee. It was far too strong for her taste.

She sighed as she looked at him, “Because I needed my fix of coffee while jogging, and I saw you sitting in here by yourself so I thought that you might at least want some company...”

“Well I didn't,” he spat angrily, sipping his coffee and turning his head away from her. “I wanted to be alone, and you just ruined it.”

She looked at him and noticed that he was continuing to face away from her, refusing to even look at her as he insulted her. She felt as if she should be offended by everything he was saying, but if she was being honest with herself, she couldn't take him seriously. Aside from him contaminating poor Pete with the hideous smell of his cigarettes, Maggie didn't mind Michael nearly as much as he minded her.

His attitude could do with some adjusting though, but she couldn't change that. Changing his behaviour would have to be his own decision to make.

“Why are you even bothering me? Poser. Just fuck off and continue with your conformist exercise. It's no point trying to get in shape when we're all gonna just die anyway,” he mumbled, tapping his cigarette into the ashtray on the table.

Maggie chuckled, irritating Michael even further. God, couldn't she get the point that he didn't want her around him at all? He was making it clear, almost painfully, that he didn't want her to be around him. He wasn't interested in friendships or anything other than a limited-contact landlord-tenant relationship, like how it was supposed to be.

She stood up and threw her styrofoam cup in the bin beside their table, “You sure do like to keep everyone at an arms length...”

“Yeah, well, that's because everyone sucks and they should just all die,” it didn't seem like anyone nearby understood enough English to know what exactly Michael was saying, otherwise he probably would have been asked to leave. “Fucking conformists.”

Maggie looked at him and put her headphones on her head before clicking her iPod back onto the waistband of her pants. Before she resumed her music and her exercise, she looked at him and said only one thing.

“You must be very lonely Michael... ”

She left with her music playing in her ears, and resumed her jog through the cold night. Michael watched her go and stared down angrily into his coffee as soon as she was out of sight.

“Stupid conformist bitch, what the fuck does she know...” he looked to his hand and saw that his cigarette had almost burned up, and that his coffee was beginning to cool through the mug. 

He liked being alone; it was how he managed in his life, and as it continued, it seemed as thought he was destined to wander through it by himself. Everyone had left him, it was bound to happen. He grew to enjoy what it felt like to be truly alone, with no one to turn to in times of difficulty, and the quiet that came with it, free from harping opinions and people that meant nothing.  
But he had to admit – despite the fact that Michael relished in the sound of silence and how it felt to know himself more than anyone else ever could hope to know him, his existence was indeed a lonely one.  
It was quiet, and he didn't know what to fill the void with.

He became aware of his own thoughts and gripped at the handle of his mug in frustration, frowning down at his coffee and how the steam rising from it heated his pale face, “Goddamnit....”

Once again, Maggie had managed to get to him. It was a stab to his character, being told that he must be lonely. Of course he was; that was the point of being goth right? Everyone sucks, life is only good when you're by yourself, and that's it. But as he continued to pour his coffee into his mug and out onto the table beneath, he knew that she was getting under his skin. And he wasn't happy about it.

What awoke him was the sound of his phone vibrating. As of right now, Michael was ready to throw it out the window and onto the pavement if it was Frank texting him something else idiotic about his tenants.  
One glance at the text, however, told him otherwise.

“It's me Michael... I'm sorry.”


	7. なやみ (Chapter 7)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> なやみ = "trouble, troubles, worry, distress, agony, problem"
> 
> Sorry about being away so long my readers! I've been working through the horrific Christmas rush and I've barely had time for anything else. I'll try to make more of an effort, but I'll probably be able to write more during my break! So, look forward to that :)

Learning that some dog and cat cafes required on site groomers was a step in the right direction for Maggie. As it turned out, grooming services had been inundated with the pets of regular citizens, meaning that worker pets tended to be neglected. It was an opening for her to get into the job market, as saturated as it might have been, and knowing that Kyle was attending an interview as of this moment drove her try even harder than she was before.

Walking out of Dog Heart from Aquamarine was like walking out of heaven on Earth. Where else would dogs be so happy to see you as you enjoyed a lovely cup of coffee? The dogs were well-behaved, which usually meant they would be comfortable with grooming.

Maggie laughed at the idea of taking Michael there, but she knew that he would probably cut out his eyes before he agreed to such a conformist idea of drinking coffee with dogs nuzzling in his lap. She didn't at all regret telling him that he must have been lonely, and it wasn't exactly like he didn't deserve to be told that after the way he was treating her and Kyle.

“Kyle never did anything to him,” she found herself talking quietly as she stood in the elevator by herself, her handbag at her side. “Irritable jerk...”

The doors to the elevator opened slowly after the loud ding, and Maggie made the short walk back to the apartment room. She began searching through her pockets along the key, ready to unlock the door as soon as she arrived.  
As she did, she found a certain red-headed man sitting by the door with his knees at his chest and his head against his arms, his long coat pooling at his hips.

Her eyes widened, “Kyle? What are you doing? Are you okay?”

As he heard his name, Kyle lifted his head, his red locks falling into his green eyes as he did, and he blinked at her. His vision was blurry, and he barely recognised her. It took closing one of his eyes to actually make out her features, and as soon as he did, a stupid smile broke out on his face.

“Ohhh hey Maggie! Heyyyy... how's it going?”

Oh god.

“Whoa, are you drunk? What the fuck dude, YOU'RE DRUNK?! I didn't even think you drank!”

“I don't,” he muttered, running his hands through his hair. “But... I fucked up Maggie, I fucked up so much....”

Maggie retrieved her key from her pocket and went over to the door. She wasn't prepared to sit outside and talk about whatever it was that he had managed to screw up so royally, possibly to be overheard by her neighbours. 

“Come inside, we'll talk about this over some coff--”

“You can't... I uh... I...” 

The cuts and tip of Kyle's key was lodged within the lock, the bow of it broken off and laying on the ground beneath her feet. Maggie was mortified; she was locked out of her own apartment with a drunken Kyle who looked as if he was about to vomit and pass out any second. She turned to him and breathed slowly to calm herself down before rattling the door handle.

“How did this happen? You actually broke the key...”

Kyle pouted and looked down at the carpet, holding his hands over his head, “I-I thought that... like... pushing the key thatta way would open it...”

Maggie picked the bow of Kyle's key up and sighed, turning it in her fingers and inspecting it. There wasn't much she could do, other than call Michael.  
She frowned. What a pleasant conversation this was bound to be.

“Goddamnit Kyle,” she mumbled, pulling her cellphone out of her handbag.

“I'm sorry Maggie! I am...” Kyle whined, burying his head deeper between his knees and holding his arms over them, as if to protect himself from her in case she lashed out and attacked him.

This wasn't normal to Kyle's character at all. He was usually so responsible and level-headed, and it almost disturbed Maggie to see him in such a state. The sooner the conversation with Michael was over, the quicker she could get to the root of what Kyle's issues was.

“What?” Michael's oh-so cherry voice echoed from across the phone. 

“Michael, it's Maggie. Look, Kyle's drunk out of his mind and he, uh, he broke his key in the lock of our apartment, so we're both locked out...”

A moment of silence passed on the other line of the phone as Michael was trying to process what he was just told. He sighed and closed his eyes, wondering if he'd ever manage to get a bunch of normal tenants for once during his career.

“So, let me get this straight, Broflovski is drunk and he fucked up the lock so much that you can't get your own key in it?” he frowned, knowing that this meant he'd have to get in contact with his dumbass boss. “Well great, thanks for informing me.”

Maggie sighed and began to pace outside the door, ignoring Kyle curling himself into a tighter ball against the wall.

“Is that supposed to be sarcasm? Because we don't really need it right now. We need a locksmith Michael, do you have the number to one?”

It wasn't exactly this had never happened before, there were many instances of tenants accidentally locking either themselves or their roommates without realising it. It was usually a simple mistake, but after Kyle's colossal mess up, it wouldn't just be a simple unlock for the locksmith to deal with. Michael sighed, knowing that this is something they'd have to pay for out of their pockets, which would only lead to more paperwork between him and Frank.  
He flipped through his business cards and retrieved one for the locksmith he regularly contacted.

“Yeah I do,” he gave her the number, speaking slow enough for her to write the number down. “Look, this is going to cost you two lame-os. The locksmith dude will give you a quote and if the damage is that bad, you'll have to get out for a few days while we replace the lock. You pay the locksmith when he's finished his work, and I'll have to write this up in the books. Alright?”

Saying that many sentences exhausted Michael; he breathed an audible breath over the phone.

“... Okay, thanks Michael. Sorry about this,” Maggie sat down beside Kyle and put her bag down. 

Kyle lifted his head and groaned a little bit, shouting a slurred, “Sorry curly goth guy!”

“I have a name for fucks sake. And you two should be sorry, now I have to get a new key cut for me. Thanks a lot. Now leave me alone will you?”

Maggie rolled her eyes and hung up, looking at Kyle and sighing. He didn't seem to have improved at all, but he at least didn't look as nauseous as he did before. She grabbed the arm of his coat and tried to pull him towards her, attempting to help him get on his feet.

“Come on Kyle we can't stay here tonight, we have to book into a hotel,” she strained in trying to pull him up, despite his fragile frame.

“What? Why?” he asked, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles.

“Because you locked us both out when you broke your key in the lock, genius,” she answered bluntly, grabbing his hands and pulling them away from his eyes. Rubbing his eyes with the boniest parts of his hands looked painful, even if he didn't feel it right now. “Come on, get up.”

He whined and pulled away from her, cuddling back up in the ball he was in before, “I don't wanna. I wanna stay here.”

Maggie sighed and threw her hands up in defeat. Submitting to the fact that she'll probably have to wait for him to pass out, she resigned to sitting back beside him and threw the strap of her handbag off her shoulder. She sighed and reclined her head back against the wall, willing to sit in silence to wait for her drunken mess of a roommate to fall unconscious.

“... I fucked up the interview...”

Hearing him speak the clearest he had in the past few minutes surprised Maggie, and she turned to look at him. His green eyes continued to stare down at the carpet, and the only emotion she could read on his face was guilt. She leaned forward, wanting to get more information.

“Wha, what do you mean? At the law firm?” Kyle nodded and sighed sadly. “What, why do you think that?”

“Because I couldn't speak a word of Japanese, other than... like, really basic shit... I think they wanted someone who was fluent...”

She looked down and sighed but placed her hand on his shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. He glanced at her quickly but looked away, ashamed of his failure at the interview. Maggie didn't know much about what else the interview entailed, but she knew enough about Kyle to confidently say that he was intelligent enough to work among the lawyers at Jones' Day, his handling of the language aside.  
Maggie scooted closer to him and laid her head on his shoulder, gently pressing her cheek against the material of his coat.

“You don't know that Kyle, you might have done really good,” she began. “I mean, I never went to uni so I don't know what it's like, but I'm sure the idea of thinking that you've failed something is pretty common. Especially with like essays and stuff, right?”

Kyle sighed and pouted, gently letting his head droop to the side, “Well yeah but...”

Maggie looked up at him and narrowed her eyes at him, “Look, right now we need positivity! You just locked us both out of our home in the middle of the night and we're gonna have to pay for it as soon as it gets fixed. The last thing we need is self-loathing! We can handle this, alright?”

His head was far too fuzzy to argue with her. All he could do was sigh and press his head back on the wall, watching the shapes in his blurred vision pop in and out of existence.  
From what he could feel and what he could register in his brain at the current moment, he felt her placing her head back on his shoulder and snuggling against him. The rough material of his coat couldn't have been comfortable at all. Kyle glanced down at her and reached his hand over to grab onto the lower part of her arm, gently letting his fingers press into her skin. Maggie glanced up at him and saw that he was beginning to nod off. 

Finally.

“I really should be more positive...” he mumbled, pressing his head back against the wall as he held Maggie close to him. “But... I can't be fucked really...”

She looked up at him and chuckled quietly. She watched as his head drooped against the wall, his eyes closed and his mouth agape. She shook her head and stood up, grabbing onto his arm and encircling it around her shoulder.

“Come on big man, let's go...” she strained to lift him up for a little while but managed to get her footing after taking his ridiculously heavy coat off.

Leaving their apartment, and most importantly, Kyle's insulin, behind for the night, Maggie and an unconscious Kyle walked into the elevator, Maggie apologising to any of her neighbours who just so happened to witness the odd scene. After pressing the lobby button, Maggie could only stand and wait as Kyle began to cradle his head against hers. She moved her head to accommodate him and frowned.

“Fool...”

\--------

Maggie and Kyle's stupidity would have to wait for a little while; Michael had to reread the text he received in the cafe over and over again, just to be sure that he was reading it right.

“You were right Michael. You were right the whole time. Life IS just pain and despair, I should have never told you otherwise cause you clearly know what the fuck is going on.  
I know you're in Japan dude, so we can't meet up. But, I just need someone to talk to about this shit, and you seem like you're the only person who can understand it.

Call me man.

Pete.”

The goth felt a pierce at his brain when he read the name at the bottom of the text. His thoughts immediately went to Maggie's teddy bear that he had in his possession for almost a whole week, but he shook the memory from his head. Like a goddamn teddy bear could text anyway.  
It was the guy who had decided long ago that sex was the answer to everyone's problems, the guy who had conformed to everyone getting banged and decided that it would be a quick solution for him and his family issues.

Michael puffed his chest out and sneered. Why he would want anything to do with that conformist was beyond him. It was going to take more than a simple little text to get Michael to converse with Pete over the phone, so he instead sent a text back and put his phone down on his desk.

“That's what I've been saying for ages Pete, that life is all pain. It always will be. What even happened? Do I even want to know? Will I even care?

If you tell me that your oh-so-loving and perfect preppy girlfriend broke up with you, then I'm probably gonna tell you that I expected it. You know those asshole preppy conformists have the attention spans of a spoon, and that won't change.

Still, you gave up being a goth pretty easily; holy shit it's just like that time Henrietta went emo. That was pathetic.”

Michael still had to deal with Maggie and Kyle's screw up, and grabbed his clipboard to write a note about their problem. The locksmith's quote would be shaky, but considering how bad the situation sounded, it was going to take more than cutting another key to fix it.  
He knew that Frank would probably flip a lid at the knowledge that Kyle basically destroyed the entire locking mechanism, but he could wait. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

As he got up to put the note in Maggie and Kyle's tenant folder, he heard the phone on his desk ring. It was probably Frank, to once again harass him about not thoroughly examining the bear. Clutching the piece of paper in his hands, Michael picked up the receiver and frowned.

“Look Frank don't fucking start.”

“Hello there sir, I believe you might be able to help me with something,” the voice said on the other end of the line.

It wasn't Frank.

“What the? Who's this?”

“I am from the Jones' Day Law Firm in the city, I believe your, ah, tenant Kyle Broflovski came in for an interview today.”

“Yeah?”

“I was wondering if you had his cellphone number?”

Michael blinked, beginning to get confused.  
What kind of a question was that? Shouldn't they have already had his cellphone number? Wasn't it on his resume or whatever?

“Uhhh... aren't you guys meant to have that information? You just interviewed him didn't you?”

“Yes well you see the problem is, we believe that he might have given us an incorrect number. We've tried getting into contact with him but he didn't pick up and it led to a dead end. Has he perhaps changed his number?”

Michael scoffed, “Well the reason he didn't pick up is probably because he's drunk. Conformist. But whatever, I have his number here if you really want it.”

“Oh yes please, that would be great!”

Looking down at Kyle's tenant file, he recited his cellphone number to the man on the phone and looked back up towards the wall, where his focus had been for the entirety of the strange conversation.

“What's the big deal anyway? Did he actually pass the interview?”

“That, uh, information is confidential sir, but thank you for providing a way to get in contact with him. Have a good night.”

The person on the other end of the line hung up the phone before Michael could comment. He blinked and looked at the receiver before putting it down and grabbing his coat. He was done for the night, and he turned off his cellphone to prevent Frank from calling him during his relaxation time.  
He shut the light off in his office and left, but as he closed the door behind him, he couldn't help but shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong with the conversation that just took place.


	8. うらぎり(Chapter 8)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Kyle, Maggie and Michael-less chapter.
> 
> While these three are the center of the attention, there's no doubt that Stan and Kenny deserve some sort of update on their lives! So here we go, and enjoy the feels, if you possibly can :P

“Okay, you can do this... it's just... come on, it'll be fine...”

Stan paced on the large football field, away from the sororities and the peering eyes of his flatmates. This had to be special and, most of all, private. If not for Wendy's sake, then for the sake of Stan's sanity and his reputation among his roommates.  
He clutched the velvet box in his hand and kicked at the grass with his dress shoes. He felt a little overdressed, but he knew that looking as if he was about to attend a job interview might just push Wendy into welcoming him back into her arms.

The sound of grass and leaves crunching caught his attention, and he looked up to see Wendy approaching him. He smiled.

“H-Hi Wendy...” he fought back the urge to vomit, and had to loosen his tie a little to help the nauseous feeling.

“Hi Stan...” she mumbled, inspecting his outfit. She chuckled a little and tilted her head. “Impressive. I didn't know there was graduation today. What's the ocassion?”

“I-It's not graduation, that uh... that happened a few weeks ago...” he replied, stepping closer to her. “It's just... I have something to tell you...”

Wendy kept her eyes on him and didn't make a move to step back when he got closer to her. This was a good sign; at least she wouldn't run away as soon as he got on his knee. Stan's hopes began to swell, and he reached over to take her hand.

Although she let him interlock their fingers, Wendy continued to seem distracted, “You do? W-Well... I have something to tell you too Stan...”

He blinked and smiled, “Well, you go first then Wen!”

Wendy shook her head and looked up at him with her eyes big, as if searching for something in him. She refused to speak any longer and simply sighed.

“No, you first. What you have to say must be pretty important if you're out here on the field in a dress shirt and tie...”  
Now was the moment of truth, and there was no going back once he said it. With a deep intake of breath, Stan got down on one knee and took her hand. Wendy's eyes widened and he thought that if they got any bigger, they might pop out of her eyesockets. Her mouth opened in an attempt to say something, but all she could muster was a series of “oh my gods”.

“Wendy, babe, I love you! So much! And, I don't want anything else to come between us... n-no more of my drinking, no more drugs, no more football and classes before you, none of that! I'm willing to make a fresh start! And I want to do it with you,” he produced the velvet box from behind him and opened it, revealing the shimmering amythest and diamonds to her. “Wendy Testaburger, my love and all that I live for... will you marry me?”

Nothing came from Wendy's mouth for a solid ten seconds, and all she could do was to stare at him and at the ring. It WAS beautiful, but... she couldn't accept. She felt her heart aching just looking at him, so full of hope and joy.  
She let her hand go limp as he grabbed it again.

“... Stan I... I think I should tell you... what I...”

“Honey, you know I love you, even though I don't act like I do... I promised I was gonna stop drinking and put you before everything!” Stan frowned, determined to hit every point on the head as best as he could. “And I did NOT cheat on you! Those feminists are lying to you!”

“N-No, I... I know you didn't Stan but--”

“You gotta get away from them Wendy! Please, you're so much better than them!”

“Stan!!! I know you didn't cheat on me but I cheated on you!!”

His world stopped, and he looked at her. His eyes grew wide and, just as slowly as time had gone, he rose onto his feet, still holding the box in his hand. It was his turn to stare at her, as if trying to pull something forth from her that only he knew existed.  
But, he failed. Her heart was gone, and the look she gave him spoke volumes – she loved him so passionately once, but now it was gone, replaced by distance and emptiness.

“Y-You... w-what? When...?”

Wendy sighed and removed her hand from his, letting it fall to her side, “The night before you left for university, when you had that big party at your house? Your parents had gone away for the weekend so it was just you, me and basically everyone else from high school...”

“... Y-Yeah...?” Stan couldn't remember much, other than he knocked back about 17-or-so shots of whiskey or vodka. Whatever happened afterwards was just a blur, with the events lost in a vacuum of time and space.

“Well, you got really shitfaced and you spent all your time outside with Kyle and Craig... I was upstairs with the girls but... they knew I was upset... I was upset that you were drunk again Stan, and ignoring me... it was your big night, you were about to leave! I wanted to make it special for us...”

“I-I...”

Wendy sighed, looking down and refusing to make eye contact with him, “I went into the bathroom to cry, and... while I was up there, Kenny... Kenny came in to use the toilet...”

Stan's train of memories hit a dead end as soon as she mentioned Kenny. Kenny McCormick, his close friend who had a habit of being suspended for weed possession and smoking in the bathrooms at high school. Kenny, who kept up his superhero identity as Mysterion to protect his little sister from harm. Kenny, who got the girls' hearts racing just at the thought of his golden blond locks and his stunning deep blue eyes.  
Kenny, who... had sex with Wendy behind Stan's back.

“He saw that I was upset, and he said that he understood where I was coming from...”

“Psh, about what exactly?” Stan's temper was beginning to get the better of him, and his fists clenched the more Wendy told him about the event.

“He... he knew what it was like to put up with a loved one who seemed to love drinking more than being with their family, or the ones they adored... he understood Stan... a-and he... in your parents bed--”

“OH GOD STOP PLEASE,” Stan threw his hands up, dropping the ring onto the grass. “Just STOP! I don't wanna hear any more!!”

She took his arm, seemingly not finished with the story. Stan could only look at her with tears rolling down his cheeks, knowing that whatever else it was that she had to say would seal their broken relationship forever.  
Wendy looked down and sniffled, watching as droplets fell from her eyes.

“... Before I got my entrance to this uni, I... started feeling sick... I went to the doctors... I-I was...”

“N-No...”

“I'm sorry Stan... I-I told him, and... he said that he'd support whatever I chose to do, but... I aborted it...”

It wasn't just a rejection – it was as if she had grabbed his heart out of his chest, beat it into the ground with a mallet and left it out for the maggots. Everything Stan was comfortable with knowing had just come crashing down on him, and he didn't know what else to do. He only had one coping mechanism, and after Wendy's revelation, he had no one to hold him back. Fueled with rage, Stan turned his back on her and ripped his tie off, throwing it on the ground as he began to walk away.

“S-Stan!! STAN, PLEASE! I'm sorry!!”

“DON'T FUCKING SPEAK TO ME AGAIN WENDY! WE'RE DONE! THAT'S IT!” Stan screamed at the top of his lungs, pointing his finger right in her face. “WE COULD HAVE BEEN HAPPY!! I WOULD HAVE SACRIFICED SO MUCH FOR YOU!!! YOU'VE RUINED IT. Just FUCK off will you?!”

Wendy had no choice but to let him go. She looked down at the ring that sat on the blades of grass and picked it up, sighing sadly. Stan continued to walk along the field, feeling the rage, sadness, dejection and, most suffocating of all, loneliness, spill over in his very being like a scientific volcano project. He wiped his eyes and his nose on the sleeve of his shirt as he made his way off the field and towards the university's on-site bar.

It was the only thing he knew how to do to relieve heartache. Right now, he'd need at least a minimum of three bottles of it to give him some peace.  


\---------

It was visiting time for the prisoners in unit B-5, and Kenny found a sense of relief at getting out of his cell for something other than “recreation duty”, whatever the hell that meant. Unlike previous visiting times however, where Kenny was usually told not to bother with it as he had no visitors, this time was different. The warden had actually made a point to visit him in his cell and inform him that he had a visitor.

The feeling was good, and it finally made Kenny feel like he was loved by somebody. 

Despite all of his friends leaving him, he had no ill will towards any of them; they had their lives, and this was his. Not much he could do about it.  
But as he looked down at his hands, he knew that was a lie. There was something he could do...

“Hey McCormick,” a voice at the table beside his cheered out in glee, catching his attention.

It was “Salem”, an older prisoner who had had his eyes on Kenny for a while. He knew why; Salem had always wanted a prison wife, and while he believed he had found one in Kenny, the blond was always too feisty for his own good. It never worked out, regardless of how much Salem made his want for him clear.

Kenny frowned and put his hand up to block Salem out of his peripheral vision. He came here to be visited by a loved one, not be harassed by some big angry dude in his orange getup that was clearly too small for him.  
As his vision was directed to the table, he heard the seat opposite his pull out and a voice mumble quietly to him.

“K-Kenny...?” 

A familiar voice indeed. Kenny looked up and saw Karen, his younger sister whom he loved so dearly, sit down opposite him. His mood was immediately uplifted and he smiled the widest smile he could.

“Karen...!”

Knowing that they were being watched by the warden, they had to have as limited physical contact as possible. Kenny knew the standards and the rules, but Karen became upset at seeing him in the state he was in. He looked dejected and tired, as if he was just about ready to give up on life. Karen reached over and held Kenny's hand in hers, running her thumbs across his scraped up knuckles.

“I know mum and dad haven't been around to see you, and neither has Kevin,” she began, pouting at seeing what appeared to be dried blood on his fingers. “It's been really rude of them Kenny, I don't know why they just refuse to... see you...”

Kenny scoffed and rolled his eyes, “That's because they're selfish pricks Karen, and they choose their stupid decisions over their family.”

She looked down sadly, but his statement managed to bring a shimmer of hope into her eyes. She glanced up at him and smiled, but her black eye caught his attention.

“Karen... who did that?!” he shouted, instinctively standing up to get a closer look. It looked fresh. He felt his blood boil underneath his skin, and he was positive that if he got any angrier, it would burst out from his head.

She shied away from his outburst and began to sniffle, holding her hands to her eyes, “I-It was dad... h-he called me “good fer nothin'” after I messed up the mowing... I-I... I mowed into one of their--”

“Shhh!” Kenny quickly managed to hush her up after waving his hands in her face and managing to draw away any attention. He sat back down and grabbed her hand, inspecting it and her arm for any other signs of abuse.

“... He doesn't come around anymore Kenny...” she mumbled, wiping her tears away from her eyes with her free hand.

“What? Who doesn't?”

Karen continued to sniffle but managed to utter three words that would change Kenny's outlook on everything;

“My guardian angel...”

He knew exactly who she was talking about, and it began to hurt him. Was it his fault that she was being abused? He wasn't there to stop it, he wasn't there to be the guardian angel he had promised her he was going to be all those years ago. He kept the identity to protect her, and look at what happened as soon as he was gone. Kenny felt his anger pent up inside and he looked down.

“He was supposed to be there to protect you...”

“... Kenny, when are you going to get out? Home isn't the same without you there...” Karen said quietly, looking down at her lap and pushing her fingers together.

Any other day before, Kenny would have replied with the truth. 'Not for a long time'. It was true, shaving a few months of his sentence wouldn't really do much if it was just bumped back to three years in prison rather than the four he currently has.  
After seeing the state of his sister however, Kenny was up and ready to leave right now if it meant protecting her from the wrath of his drugged up parents. They only got worse as Kenny got older, and he had been trying to save up to move out. The thought of leaving Karen there...

“I'm gonna get out as soon as I can little sis, don't worry,” he reached over and gently touched her arm, smiling at her. “I'll be back home before you know it.”

She looked up at him and smiled with hope and nodded, but was escorted away almost as soon as she had arrived. Karen waved him goodbye with her smile still on her face, and left the cafeteria under the escort of one of the guards. Kenny looked down at his hands and sighed, knowing that there would only be one way of making sure he would get out of here.  
He turned to look at Salem, who was just saying goodbye to what appeared to be his brother. Visiting time was over as soon as it began, although Kenny made sure that he would never again have to see Karen in such a shit way. With a sigh, he rose from his chair and walked over to Salem, who too was just standing up.

Salem grinned when he saw his future prison wife approaching him, and he crossed his arms in an attempt to look appealing, “So, have you finally decided to take me up on my offer? I could protect you, you know...”

“Protect yourself from this, shithead,” Kenny mumbled as he lifted his knee and aimed it square into Salem's junk.

Everyone in the prison knew that touching Salem anywhere if they weren't authorised to meant certain death. He had taken a freezeblock to someone's head and organised a gang hit on another prisoner for simply brushing past him. Salem was a maniac, and Kenny had just set him off.

Groaning in pain, and with time seemingly slowing down for Kenny as the guards raced towards him to break up the fight, Salem grabbed a serrated plastic knife from the lunch tray nearby and lodged it straight through Kenny's eye, destroying the eye and going in deep enough to pierce his brain. His functions all beginning to cease, Kenny fell to the ground and landed on the knife, which snapped as soon as he did.  
The last thing Kenny managed to hear was the sound of prison alarms, yells of “restrain him” and a loud siren, and as he faded to black, he thought of going back to protect Karen...

\---------

The familiar juxtaposition of his parents arguing and birds chirping cheerily nearby greeted Kenny as he woke up in his bed. He sat up and ran his hands over his face, making sure that his eye was still intact. Satisfied when he pressed on the jelly like formation in the eye socket, Kenny threw his blankets off and let his long legs out from their confines and onto the carpet, which looked like it hadn't been cleaned since he was arrested.

As he was stretching his toes out, the door to his bedroom opened and Kevin stood there with blankets, apparently wanting to remake his bed. Upon seeing Kenny, Kevin frowned and rolled his eyes, not surprised at all by his younger brother's sudden reappearance.

“Well that fucking sucks, I was supposed to have your room...”

Kenny frowned and stood up. He never really enjoyed Kevin's company, and he suspected that Kevin only turned a blind eye whenever Karen was being abused. He grabbed the door and glared at him.

“Get the fuck out, asshole!” 

As he slammed the door on his older brother, he noticed that his wardrobe had remained untouched in the few months that he was in jail.

It seemed as if his parents and Kevin didn't even notice that Kenny was gone, but now that he was back, it was time to make them pay. For everything.  
For hurting Karen. For setting him up.

But as he rummaged in his drawers for his Mysterion costume, his phone dinged with a message on his bedside table. Running over to check, and nearly tripping on an odd porno magazine that he had left on the carpet, Kenny read the first line and frowned before throwing it on his bed and going back to his task.

“U ASSHLE KEN! U TOKE WENDIE FROM ME! URE GONNA PAY! ILL GET U!”

**Author's Note:**

> As of right now, translations to the Japanese phrases will NOT be provided (unless you want to Google them yourself of course!). Reason being, like Kyle, Japanese would right now seem like a bunch of incoherent sounds and noises, but like Kyle, you readers will eventually learn and get used to it!
> 
> But I will reveal the final word of the chapter (and actually the entire title of the chapter) as "oishii" or "yummy". ^^


End file.
